Our own black hole

The black hole they're talking about isn't up above but down below, here on earth, connected as one planet is connected to another to the notion that as we're becoming more and more well informed and knowledgable about almost everything we're even more in the dark, becoming ever more and more powerless. 

For all the benefits of the past--plastics, antibiotics, the extraction industy, air travel--that promised to make us masters of the earth seem to be turning into liabilities.

Consequently I was delighted when the Israeli spacecraft crashed into the moon the other day, thinking it might be some sort of spiritual signal advising all of us to slow down, to pay more attention to the earth, the densest planet in the solar system. Fortunately no one was hurt, and there was no report of Palestinian settlements. 

Gottfried Benn, a writer with whom I'm currently engaged, wrote in the mid 1950s: "The exploration of outer space hasn't yet reached the stage where we could start to feel something again at the sight of the stars."  

'Giotto', painting in progress, 2'3" x 2'3", acrylic on canvas, 2019.