Touching the Ocean It is simple to think the sun or moon is just "over there" -- not far from our reach. It is simple also to think the ocean is as flat as it is vast. When I was young, I believed there could be some truth to the notion the world was flat -- that we could quite possibly walk to the edge, "out there" and look "down" into an even greater vastness. I imagined it would be dark and that the void would be filled with stars. The trip would be a very long one, but quite possible given enough time. That question of the trip's duration brought to mind other thoughts about infinity versus distances "just short of" it. Surely we could somehow travel out over this flat and wet world if we could also imagine there being any distance even as much as one step shy of "the end." It was simpler to temporarily set aside the brilliant theories of Einstein, Copernicus, Newton and others and to instead resort to a more logical assumption -- that Columbus was perfectly correct. It was enough to stir the thoughts having to do with somehow traveling "there" to witness the truth of our "table-top" exitance. It is this "touching" of the ocean by heavenly bodies that does to this day reaffirm the power of possibilities at the simplistic age of seven. Back