A CELESTIAL VIEW FROM HONOLULU
In an attempt to calm down after the craziness of the presidential election, I pulled out my telescope and directed it south over Honolulu looking early evening for Jupiter and Saturn. The night air is usually humid, saturated with diffused light from the city, and infused with light from a tropical moon, but last night was the exception. It was cool, dry and I was able to catch Saturn as clear as I've ever seen it, with my little Celestron 114 with Baader Planetarium Hyperion Mark III Zoom 24-8 mm lens at high (8 mm). I took tens of photos holding my Leica DM6, telephoto extended, over the viewer. I couldn't capture any of the planet's moons, which, on occasion I've been able to see, and I had to enhance the photo to the point of losing the few minuscule background stars that I could see through the viewer. 
There's something eternal and calming about the planets, especially Saturn, to me. Gazing at the heavens through a telescope, invariably produces more there than meets the naked eye, a sort of reminder that there's more to heaven than we mortals can ever imagine.
As the minutes drifted by, I began thinking of the protagonist in my newest creative work tentatively entitled "Shadow." Here's an excerpt introducing him:
"Gary Samuel Johnson was as nondescript a man as possible. Fair-skinned, at five-foot-six inches, he carried 175 pounds of muscle covered in what the few women who noticed him would describe as an external layer of pudgy infant-fat. His unyieldingly-straight, mousy-brown shock of hair, fine sparse body hair, and long angular face made him look more like a docile horse than a mature adult. Indolent and docile, yet fidgety and easily spooked, after forty years of lack of exercise, he felt the way he looked. Only his brilliant diamond-hard hazel-grey eyes betrayed the fiery intelligence that lurked beneath his languid lost-puppy demeanor.
"To say that his life was a waste of both God and Evolution's efforts, and that his future looked little more than dim would be gross understatements. He had done - accomplished - absolutely nothing, except perhaps survived a malevolent childhood and several failed marriages. Worn, wounded and waiting for nothing in particular, G. Samuel Jackson, or "G" as his few passing friends in life were inclined to call him, was content to shuffle his way from his small nondescript apartment on the East Bay side of San Francisco, into a nondescript bus, for a nondescript ride to the local Salvation Army for some nondescript morning soup."
Viewing Saturn reminded me of the utter insignificance of Gary Samuel Johnson's existence, which, as the story develops, turns out to be so much the opposite. View a planet. Think Gary.
