Polish immigrant tobacco farmers, 1940 (Getty Museum)

Because, now and then, for the well being of your soul, you have to evict the empty diversions, addictive distractions, the noisome bile, and ponder, in the brief space exhumed by an image, a note of music, a spiraling leaf, a stranger’s touch, a kindness, a child’s wonder, or Earthshine married to sliverous Moon, in this volume of relief, this anomalous bliss, this sudden expanse of silence—how is it that we, somehow, have willingly mongered purposeful calm for mindless glitter, mere noise?—and reflect on the inverse of nothing.

Comet C/2011 L4 (Pan-STARRS) and an Earthshine-lit crescent Moon, 2013-03-12 19:25 MST