The Perseids

"After his death, Perseus was made immortal and put among the stars."

The other night I saw the Perseids meteor shower.  It has been the closest thing I've seen to space weather.  It has been the closest thing celestial I've ever seen on "earth" and it was probably still about 85 km away.  God only knows how I'd like to see the Aurora Borealis (100km.)

At around 2 o'clock when the moon had set, nearly full and very red in the west, the meteors began.  I must have seen nearly twenty in three hours.  It was wonderful. I tired to take a picture of the sky early in the evening, not for documentation or any aesthetic reason, but just for proprieties sake.  It was as black as the background of this page.  It was lovely.  

The Persieds is the result of the Swift-Tuttle comet, which one day, not in this millennium, is suspected to crash into either this planet or it's moon.  Every year we pass through it's debris.   Every summer, in the middle of August, it has its peak and there is a meteor nearly every minute of the hour all morning long.  Isn't that wonderful sounding?

I also saw an old friend the other night.  Not my oldest, but as old as many of them get.  I hadn't seen her what felt like a very long time.  We spent the early morning together watching what meteors we could.  That was quite lovely too.  I'm glad she's interested in things I find interesting too.  It's nice to be able to watch hours of briefly appearing meteors on a brisk morning with someone.  It's nice too when you can talk about books and stuff with someone and they get your stupid poetry jokes.  She's the type of woman I'd like to think I'd have been if things had started differently for me; or the type of girl I could see myself having someday.  I haven't a bad memory about her though I do remember a few bad times we've had.  Sometimes getting older feels nice.

The Perseids is going to last a long time.  A very long time.  It's already lasted a very long time.  It's going to be around when we are not.  We're going to be able to see it ever year for many years- show our children it you know?  Or they can stay up late and see it themselves like we did.  I like that too.

We can't screw it up.  We can't, it isn't very possible.  Even with all the light pollution I still saw it.  It's there for good, which is a nice thought, because not everything will always be.  Every memory I have of her now is of laughter, and that most of all is very nice.

cml

The Moon, a Preview

"Lately I've found my thoughts, my soul, and my every meditation losing themselves from me and ascending away to the cool-black seas of the moon. My beautiful lady Luna, my final peace."

"the harsh bright soil of Luna"

But that is neither here nor there. Just a quick heads up, Matt is gone, I'm in charge, so.... MORE MOON. So sweet. Other than all that I don't have much for you, but thanks for all the comments on the Wendy's letter; I'll post a response from the corporation if I ever get one.

What's next? More book reviews, more letters. Love you beautiful sonsofabitches.
best,
CML

In the words of Vanilla Ice...

"Ice Ice maybe?"

Sorry about that, but I just couldn't help myself.  Mars!

Go Go Space Racer

Lunar Rover is a cool name for a car. I’d drive one. Not because it is especially cool. In fact, I imagine driving the lunar rover is a lot like building a soapbox racer with an Erector Set and old tire swings while trying to look cool in a Michelin Man outfit, be bad ass enough to be a scientist and an pilot, and all the while hoping not to float off into a great black oblivion that there is no doubt would kill you in a long, lonely, cold way.

Lunar Rover just sounds so poetic and haunting though. Lunar Rover is the kind of car a dark Druid wizard would drive. If hobbits built cars they’d build Lunar Rovers.

Hobbiton:

The Lunar Rover, built Bag End tough.

The Lunar Rover story must go something like this:
“What are we going to do on the moon guys?”
“I don’t know, wander around a bit I guess. Rove it.”
“You mean we’re going to be the first space ramblers?”
“Yeah, and we can ramble around in our moon car. Our rover.”
“Our Moon Rover? Yeah. I can’t wait to get to the moon now.”
“You know it. We are going to look so cool once we’re up there. No body is going to dare mess with us.”
“Yeah, or we’ll smoke them. I’ll be like, ‘hey man, this is our turf, and don’t you see the flag?’ And then you can crouch down behind him and I’ll kick him and he’ll fly off into space or back down to earth and burn up on re-entry.”
“Wow, this is really our year. I love West Side Story.”

You know what is inside the international space station Mir?
A bunch of Lunar Rovers and about a dozen “nucular” weasels. Oh, and some replacement giant tennis ball cans.

Starship Captain

Sometimes I think I should’ve been born in a different era.

People always say that, people always crave change. For some reason, they want something new, something different. The grass is always greener on the other side, and probably dozens of other old sayings that don’t come to mind right at the moment. Sometimes, though, it does seem that it really is greener over there, or maybe it is just greener in fiction. Yeah…

Maybe I would’ve been better off being born in a different reality, something that wasn’t so concrete, something more superfluous, somewhere more magical.

I started re-reading Dune about a week ago. I’m not sure quite what gave me the urge to do it, but I picked it up and started reading it. I think it was some sort of yearning to read an epic space opera... I can't really believe I just used that phrase, but I'm just going to go with it. I would read for a while and then start to feel guilty about doing it and begin to talk myself into reading something that I hadn’t read already. I have a huge stack of books that I want to read this summer, and I was “wasting” time rereading something I had read years ago. I always do this, make reading into some sort of chore and try to “accomplish” something by finishing a book that I don’t really want to. I should just read what the hell I want and stop reading what I don’t enjoy. But, anyhow… I stopped and considered reading something else several more times, but I never did pick anything else up, Dune was just too good.

And then I reached a point that made it all worthwhile, that made me realize just why I was still reading it and why I always listed it among my favorite books. As I was riding north along I-69 in Indiana, I reached some sort of nirvana.

I don’t think it was the words on the page, or even the place in the book that did it for me, but everything just came together in an instant. I realized just how great a book I was reading. It’s so good that I cannot even begin to explain it. I just felt like Paul, knowing that he was moving inexorably to a future he did not want, but being helpless to stop it. It was pure contentment, pure joy and a feeling of intense comfort and satisfaction, as if I was doing the perfect thing, at the perfect time, in the perfect place. I know there are countless people who wouldn’t enjoy reading Dune, many who probably would hate it, even… I know this, it’s not for everyone. I guess it’s plodding at times (but I never find it so), maybe a bit confusing, it’s long and dense, but I guess that’s part of what I love about it. Herbert created a world so rich and huge that it took my breath away even though nothing was new to me. At that one moment, the book was perfect, and the world was so right that I ached to be there myself. I wanted to be on that awful desert world. I wanted to be caught up in all the intrigue and violence of the Imperium. It is the reason I’ve sacrificed hundreds of hours to playing Imperialism, Civilization and Crusader Kings, just trying to reach that place where I feel that I am actually there, that I am actually the commander of armies, the diplomat plotting, the captain of that mammoth starship.

And, I guess it’s the same reason that I love Star Wars so much, the reason that I feel every insane, nostalgic feeling that I do. It’s all about that feeling that I can’t even explain correctly. Those things are more than movies to me, more than books, more than ideas, more than anything that I could ever put my hands on, or watch with my eyes. It is a world, a galaxy that is so ripe and wonderful that I cannot help but yearn to be there. It feels more like my home than this Earth ever will.

But, that’s when I know something is truly great. It simply transcends appreciation. I appreciate good books and movies, and I enjoy many of them, but a certain number of them strike a different chord. Some things I love, and they make me love them. It isn’t a passive experience, but they reach out, grab me by the collar and beat the living shit out of me until I realize their greatness. I feel every pang of sadness, every joyous moment and experience every wonderful adventure as if they were my own. The real world simply has never provided me with anything that real or that grand.

Gah, there I go talking about fiction again, but I just want to be a starship captain when I grow up, dammit.

Tantive IV

Why does this Rebel soldier look so pissed off?
Did he miss the Wokkiee celebration of Life Day?
Has his Bantha Milk gone sour?
Maybe he's constipated you wonder?


NOOOOOOO!
IT'S BECAUSE HE'S SHOOTING FUCKING FOAM DARTS! FROM A ELECTRIC-BLUE BLASTER! THAT SAYS "STAR WARS" ON ITS SIDE! WITH AN ORANGE TIP!
AT DARTH VADER!

VADER!

ORANGE TIP!

FOAM!


...and you people wonder how we lost Alderaan...


-The Alderaanian

Space...

Of these generations Space was born. Man’s steps feel not just on the face of our world, but on the dirt and dust of another. And even those steps changed the face of our globe. A new understanding was given to humanity, an old concept for once and for the first time real: Space. Beyond flight, beyond the sky and height and birds’ freedom we found something entirely new: Space, and eternity, “a finale frontier”… New skies, new blankets died with the richest ink that we could touch and feel and wrap around ourselves and our minds around. Man stepped out beyond this world and into a thousand others; and our lives weren’t just flat like an old map, or even constrained as on the surface of a classrooms globe, but they had depth, they’d found a new meaning. We’d stepped beyond height and found space, distance unimaginable. And in doing so, our reach exceeded our grasp. What once only our eye could touch (or could touch only our eye, or only through that our hearts and minds) now our hands had a chance at too. A distant moon became a child brought back to its mother, or a small toy rolling into our hands. Stars became more than just sparkled lights but bright hopes. How sweet and sad our world had become, so poetic as it exploded again and what little domain we had, what small grasp and clear understanding, split and spun out in a million directions to become this universe, ever expanding, and pulling with it in that expansion’s wake our many imaginations.

We found space. Real space. An emptiness, a distance, a separation. And how amazing it was. So much room to play, to fill with imagination, to dream in. And we did. We floated through it and past everything we’d known before.

In our lenses and photographs and souls we saw we were part of something more, much more. We were now part of a system. We’d been totally enfolded in a solar system, a cosmic mind we could travel through, with bodies to visit and touch and kiss.

What grace places two people near enough to fall in love and believe it destiny? How nice and right and perfect that one city might hold two people, so right for one another. Or maybe it’s a school, or a neighborhood. How well made that against all separations, great or small, once lives meet no space exist that is enough. How small is this world that one life can find another to share with, in all the multitudes of faces and feet and inches and miles of sea and earth and hill. What space is this that can be passed through and brought to its nothing point? Is this world so big, when chance or luck or faith alone can work beyond so great an obstacle as space?
So, how great is all that space we’ve found? How long will we be alone? How long until we’re found or find that no emptiness is far enough when two celestial bodies pumping in rhythmic orbit find one another?

How much space have we found, and what will be that which closes it? Our minds? Our love? Or just our souls, as dreams, returning to another bodies waking life?

I’ve never seen a mission launch. I’ve never seen that power in person that could breach our atmosphere. I’ve never been so close to a power like that, something of gods or angels. I’d love to see our space history, to see those relics, those titans of the outer limit: Sputnik-1, our silver -red- globed Prometheus and an identity of earth’s thirst and thrust. Saturn V, a true rocket ship (a beast, a giant, a cobbled mess of metal and earths core blood) ripped from true imagination and science not-so-fiction, sending more souls than Bradbury’s or Asimov’s or mine, yet unborn, to step a solid step on history. Or the first Space Shuttle, STS-1, that Columbia, whose graceful ascension rivaled that of Mohammad’s or Christ’s or Elijah’s or even Superman’s.

But I’ve seen it on television, and I’ve been cast back to sitting next to my father or mother in 1969 and seen this entire future open up in the glowing brightness of black and white. And wow, what a future that has been opened.

-Caleb Michael, BSD-1, Space Cadet

M Class

Honestly, what the fuck is going on here? Riker’s humping the ground- no surprise there. Geordi’s break dancing, or something, like the wild blind negro he is. Which, by the way, who knew there were black guys in space? And Data, fuck Data man. Ten bucks- ten bucks says he’s telling both of them what they are doing wrong and how he wishes he had the ability to fuck up like them too. Damn Data, you’re one crazy cold ass son of a bitch. Man, fuck those M-class planets.

-cml