Walking on the Moon
Created | Updated Jan 30, 2011
Today is Sunday. What with online traffic – everybody worrying about the redesign and its works and pomps – and home traffic – cats arguing with Elektra, Elektra arguing with cats, the dog trying to steal my lunch cheese – I'm starting to feel crowded. Besides, it's still winter, and cold, and my mind is blank, and my dad's just got out of hospital. I need a break.
I think I'll go to a happier place.
Walking on the Moon
The nice thing about being on the moon is the quiet.
Internet connection here is sporadic, and depends on targeting a satellite in Earth orbit. True, television and FM radio emissions from Earth are line-of-sight, which means that the large planet on the horizon is constantly spamming the cosmos, but the set in my study has an off button. Ah, peace. Since I don't have to breathe when I'm here, I just grab a jacket and go out for a Sunday stroll.
The really cool thing about being on the moon is the view. Not much in the foreground but rocks (quote from my favourite Doctor: 'Oh, look, rocks!') and some leftover golf clubs (memo to NASA: pick up your trash), but the sky is pretty spectacular. That big blue marble out there is worth the gazing at.
As the astronauts learned, the great thing about space travel is the gain in perspective. As Sandra Magnus said after spending time on the ISS, 'Our planet is our spaceship.' Seeing it that way makes some problems seem smaller, but quite a few seem bigger. If you're in a spaceship, it might not be a good idea to poison the water supply. Or fill the cabin with second-hand smoke. Your neighbours might be forgiven for testiness.
What strikes me every time I look at Earth from my home-away-from-home is that the planet looming out there in the sky is an encapsulated history. True, the geography has changed a bit here and there, even since humans arrived, but not enough to disturb the thought that what you're looking at is a map of time. Look, there's Egypt passing by...remember when they built all that splendour on the Nile, those crazy kids? We told them elaborate ritual burials were a passing fad. Nobody thinks pyramids stop time, or serve as portals, these days, er, do they...? Why are you nattering about razor blades?
And then there's the beautiful blue Atlantic...almost as blue as the new H2G2...okay, stop thinking about that...think about Brendan, Leif Eriksson, Columbus. Think about silly men in silly boats, worrying about sea monsters and falling off the edges of a Terry Pratchett world...think about minds open to possibilities, childlike in wonder even as they were in the infancy of their understanding.
Humans think they know a lot. Humans are wrong, of course, but part of their charm is their conviction that the two or three million factoids they have collected in their journey so far are a) all true, and b) most of what's out there. Boy, are they going to be surprised, someday. I can't wait.
On to the Americas...forests, trees, purple mountains' majesty...everybody's got purple mountains, why are they bragging about it? Remembering it as it was – North America before Columbus, full of forests, not so full of people. They said a squirrel could jump from tree to tree from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and never come down...people cleaned up after themselves. Okay, they weren't always nice, and they knew almost as little as a modern PhD, but hey, the place was quiet, and sometimes, the clouds of passenger pigeons filled the sky from horizon to horizon...those were the days.
Now, the only thing that fills the horizon is exhaust from the superhighways, and the night is full of car alarms and air-plane engines.
Pacific up next – remember those tiny reed boats? More people on the move. Island after island. Not always nice, either – what fool cut down the last tree on Easter Island? Humans think it is possible to isolate a time and place – some primitive paradise or engineered utopia – point to it, and say, 'There. This time, a human got it right. If we all do it this way, we'll be fine. We'll be pure. We'll be perfect. We can tell the angels to go peddle their wares.'
Humans are woefully mistaken in this. The chances that humans, using the logic of 'healthy competition' and 'enlightened self-interest' (the world's greatest misnomer) could ever produce a perfect society is much like the remark a geneticist I knew made: he said that the chances of improving a species by bombarding its genes with radiation was about the same as trying to improve your car's engine performance by hitting it with a hammer. So it goes.
On across Asia – remember Genghis Khan and Tamurlane? Remember the Buddha? Fun guy – and back over to Europe, about which the less said, the better...pretty planet, though. I glance at my watch: almost supper time, GLT (Gheorgheni Lunar Time).
Heading inside the castle for a bite and a sup, I'm glad I took this break to come out to the home-place. Reflect a bit, get a grip on what matters.
That planet up there is pretty important. And, though it may be quiet from out here, it's noisy, and busy, and full of hopes and dreams.
Long may it travel, this spaceship Earth. I might even go back soon.
