A philosophy of the Sun
Look Straight at the Sun by Cal Revely-Calder on The Hinternet is a survey of the sun in literature and philosophy. I don't know how Substack does this stuff but if you can't read the whole thing even the first few paragraphs are provoking.
Being solar powered myself I think I should have a philosophy of the sun.
It's not that you can't look directly at the sun just that you probably shouldn't and as this is such a constant piece of advice I look at the sun whenever I get the opportunity. I like it.
from NASA
What I think of as hot or cold temperatures are a miniscule slice of what is possible. This is good to be reminded of, generally. The place we spend most of our time, where we are most comfortable, that we think of as 'the world' is often a narrow sliver.
This analogy has limits. Very limiting ones. Temperature-wise I would for sure die not too far outside that sliver.
"Heat in the air in the British winter?" people like to quip about air source heat pumps. Yes, 273°C of it, even if it's freezing.
The sun's core burns at 15,000,000°C.
The sun and the moon look the same size from here, giving us lovely eclipses, because though the sun is 400 times bigger it's also 400 times further away. This seems, as far as people can tell, to be a coincidence.
Solstice, equinox, solstice, equinox. The shifting calendars as we go round and round. Time is a construct.
In Watership Down the sun is a god, Lord Frith and created the world. Blessing rabbit bottoms.
Astrotheology, the post says. This seems reasonable to me. I'm not going to worship the sun though because it's going to keep doing it's thing regardless, with no concern for me. Like the thirty-nine trillion microbes I sustain with zero effort as a byproduct of existing, so the sun sustains us all.