The sun is danger and invective. The moon is hope and narcissism. We turn our eyes to the moon, and we see a man staring back; we turn our heads to the sun and are blinded by the daring. The moon soothes. The sun punishes. The moon beams and becomes us. The sun burns and loathes us. We have dipped a human toe in moon dust. We have now, finally, eyed the fiery sun, up close, but through a glass darkly.

Our human, mortal, lives just changed with the close revelation of our sun, thanks to the scientific work of the Inouye telescope in Hawaii.

If the moon is made of cheese, the sun appears to be made of medicinal flotsam, and embedded childhood failings: baked beans, sealing wax, nuggets of gold, and Cracker Jack without the prize in the box.

Our amazing sun is made of pockets of upwelling solar plasma and each nugget is the size of Texas. Heat and energy rises and falls — of the sun! — inspiring our lungs how to intrinsically rise and fall with each inhalation and exhalation of life.

Here’s a high resolution video of our blessed sun, moving and heaving with immortality without the expectation of a sudden death.

We have been mythically bound to the sun for our survival — and for the expression of our mortal fears.

We need the sun, but we cannot abide the sun.

With my recent malignant skin cancer diagnosis, and treatment, my dermatologist has now condemned me to year-round SPF 50 for all exposed areas of skin, along with a mandatory floppy sun hat and dim sunglasses — even though the cancer appearing now was damage done 40 years ago.

However, to not wear those idle protections is to hubristically sin in public, and to continue to tempt the will of the Gods who twice burned me with their infidelity to my mortality. As an adult, I was punished as a child for daring the authority of the sky.

Shakespeare, Cymbeline:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

And so, we realize, in our waning days from the moment of first breath, that there are always more sunsets behind us than there are daybreaks ahead of us.

In that lapping of time, we grasp into the void against the darkness of death, only to be propelled backward into what we were, and not what we were meant to become.

We seek the warm light of a star we cannot bear — but one that we can now see in high definition video — just what the Gods forbade us from ever knowing.

And now, we bathe in fear, hoping the result of the retribution will be quick, and recoverable, because the sun now holds no secrets, and bears no witness to the cautions of the soul or perils to the spirit.

We, like others who glow among us, must recognize the failure in ourselves to understand why we must not touch the secrets of the sun while expecting to survive our ignorance; but once the sun touches us, we are forever marked, and instantly forsaken, because we have arrived to always knowing that truth is written in the stars, and remembered in the reflection of the moon.