Planet of novels

We have this tremendous impulse toward elevation, of making things appear more important then they are, indulging in the belief that these impermanent, gassy apparitions we have created from our own consciousness will last forever.

However, after taking a look at Comet 67P, (pictured above) reached yesterday by the Rosetta spacecraft and photographed from a height of 167 feet, seeing from this distant photographic perspective that the comet is a frozen remnant of dust and sand which scientists say "hold secrets about the early solar system," I decide to retreat once again into the subregion of a Victorian novel.

Anthony Trollope welcomes me there with his colossal novel,"The Way We Live Now", an earth shattering portrait of a moral universe in which there are actual consequences for good and bad behavior, with people from all walks of life acting in the mid-to late 19th century exactly the way they act now. Trollope's great story is funny, sad, and comforting, the story of our time, told from an unscientific perspective, launching me into the nether-world of human nature, karma, delusion, and folly from which I may never escape.

Trollope, Comet 1874B, a slow, plodding galaxy made of paper, ink, words.