It was like an underground cathedral.

In September 2022, I visited Ruinart, the oldest Champagne house in the world. The place used to age its jewel-like champagne is a 38-meter-deep Roman chalk quarry. As I stood there in the darkness and looked up to the heavens, I was struck by a deep and inexpressible emotion.

I learned for the first time that the calcareous mass familiar to us as chalk was originally a huge amount of fossilized plankton that sank to the bottom of the sea in prehistoric times.

The walls, dimly lit by orange lights, and the sky-high ceiling are all the shining white remains of primitive life forms that once upon a time lay vast deposits on this land that was once at the bottom of the sea.

What surprised me most of all was the moment I touched the wall. I had expected the chalk walls to be dry, but they were moist. The accumulation of dead fossils contains water that pours down from the heavens and nurtures, sustains the lives of plants, animals on the ground, and eventually, of us human beings as well.

In the deep darkness of the depths of the earth, my thoughts leap forward to ancient times, and now the living and the dead are flowing back and mixing together. While concentrating and holding the camera, for some reason, unexpectedly, I felt as if I would burst into tears many times.

What was I hearing and feeling there?

At that moment, the boundaries between life and death, and their contours, began to blur and dissolve. The stream of my imagination, which had been traced back to a far-off era, reminded me of the primordial life that was born on this planet for the first time, and of the birth of the earth itself. The birth of the solar system, the galaxy, and even the beginning of the universe itself.

The beginning of this universe. The material that was suddenly opened up and created in the vastness of time and space, the stardust floating in the pitch blackness of space. 

And I realized that everything I see now, the green trees and massive rocks, the shimmering water flowing in the mountains, the flowers swaying in the wind, the grapes and other colorful fruits, the deep earth and the insects lurking therein, the throngs of animals in motion, and above all, the human race itself, are all made up of this stardust.

They are gathered now. Miraculously, they are pulsating and breathing as life in various forms. Life that has been handed down from the birth of the primordial life, never once interrupted, is being received in every form and wave at this very moment.

It was like incredibly amazing music, miraculously played, I thought.

Stardust, the magical music of vibrant life.

I wanted to sing this miraculous music, this hymn to life itself, once again, without thinking, as it flows, from the bottom of my heart, to the best of my ability. With a deep and profound awareness of the One Source and our connection to all beings.

A hymn to life itself, a shining, radiant anthem that melts away all living things, even minerals and inanimate objects.