Aphelion & Perihelion

Aphelion is the point in the orbit of a celestial body where it is farthest from the sun. Perihelion is the point in the orbit of a celestial body where it is closest to the sun. 

I don’t remember where I read it, but someone once wrote that love felt like experiencing the sun on both ends, having it radiate like a warm slurry through your organs and feeling the nape of your neck itch and sunburn after you spend a little too long outside. Stare into the great bright eyes of that giant star and you’ll be blinded, left with dark, patchy spots over your world for eternity. I always remember learning that the core of the sun was the warmest, that tender hellish spot that engulfs you, and that the surface is only a skimming firework beckoning you forward.

Each year, the Earth reaches in for a slight embrace with the sun, never close enough to kiss, not far away enough to let shadow and frost consume its surface, but close enough to feel it in its every root and flower. In its orbit, the Earth lets itself lunge forward and retract like clockwork, year after year. Some blame the concept of aphelion and perihelion for the seasons – isn’t it fascinating to think that this tumultuous relationship between the two bodies changes the foliage and the mere colours of the world as we understand it?

Sometimes I like to conceptualise the Earth as having a bit of a disorganised attachment. If it were purely avoidant, it would be winter every day, and the mere thought of glimpsing at the sun would freeze over our surface. If it were purely anxious, the Earth would assume itself Icarus and burst into a confetti of flames. If it were secure, every day could be the idyllic, temperate spring of September (in Australia) that invites flurries of humming bees and Pollock-strokes of pollen, and a great big gingham blanket cuddling the dew-laden ground. But we do not, in fact, have the privilege of a temperate world, or a temperate universe for that matter.

We are all caught in a red shift, bodies wading against the tides, expanding away from this central point we call home. Sometimes I wonder if I could sit in a room with Kepler and Galileo and ask if they ever saw themselves as the universe, or a mere quark, and if, when they stared up for too long, each little hiccup of dead light sounded a little too much like they did.