On Movement and Perception Mars must be retrograde to make things this ruddy under what should have been a Libra sky. All those experiments we launched with good intent are fast falling down, their orbits gone flat, their missions incomplete, their mechanisms turned to metal rain. But who am I to complain? Even the earth is said to bulge as it spins, never true to round, while magnetic north strays ever from the true. And the measure of what cannot be is most clearly defined by the wish we made on that planet, errant from its course, we mistook for a star.

Detail from a Painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder