the universe will not be controlled by the likes of us
the title is a brilliant phrase uttered on the intertubes by AdamSelene @ theoildrum.com. this space accumulates other such short, poetic, and found-elsewhere insights into the limits of human cognition. it is a project dedicated to Wes Jackson’s vision of an “ignorance-based worldview.” a brilliant phrase uttered by his friend Wendell Barry in a letter.Archive for May, 2009
coming home from outer space
My feet, firmly standing on the grounds of the Kennedy Space Center
today, the Atlantis landed (in California, not in Florida, due to persistently bad weather). soon, the shuttle program will end (next year), and one wonders how far the next project – the Constellation Program – will get now that we are entering the new energy/economic paradigm.
i took the picture above while standing 6 miles away from launchpad 39-A, moments before Atlantis launched from America’s premiere spaceport – the Kennedy Space Center. i wanted to capture a moment of groundedness, a moment of peaceful irony, before that torrent of light and sound. looking at it now, it has accumulated more meaningfulness – living and working out here in the (relative) wilderness of Blue Heron Farm, far away from any spaceports, i could take an identical picture, if i wanted to.
is space our home? is home a directing force? in what direction am i traveling? will we, one day, leave space behind and let it reenter the realm of myth?
Hieronymus RS-24
Nozzle of a Pratt & Whitney RS-24 (Space Shuttle Main Engine)
VS.
Ascent of the Blessed (Hieronymous Bosch, 1490)
I mean, right?
Godspeed, Atlantis
a night launch, which this one was not, though it was originally scheduled to be
“Godspeed, Atlantis” — a message assembled in black letters on the sign board of a church here in Titusville. we saw it last night, out in the cool, dark breezes. we went to the water’s edge, too, last night, and looked out at Atlantis on her launch pad, flooded with spot lights. those lights were like the Aurora Borealis, slowly shifting as eerily beautiful light-shapes, only, unlike auroras, were sharpened into a cone. the quiet luminescence, the quiet anticipation of the next day’s launch, were beautiful, and there were breezes. the breezes made flags flap persistently, and it rustled the leaves of a 40-foot palm. and then the waning gibbous moon rose before our eyes above the horizon, bright, huge, and deep red. we saw it moving across the sky.
today, though, today was the launch. it was profound. it was incredibly loud. the light of the rockets was blinding. we could still see Atlantis as a small bright careening dot when she was traveling at 2,500 MPH.
this is what i wrote in my notebook half an hour before the launch:
like its namesake city, the orbiter seems a dream, a vector of the nostalgia for infinity. is a shuttle launch politicially neutral? why are these people here? to celebrate the achievements of man, not of nations, to revel in the play of excessive discovery. no one in this crowd of thousands will riot. all will be silent and awed, or else unified in exuberance, at liftoff, and all will wish Atlantis godspeed, and a safe return home to our planet.
this turned out to be true.
Godspeed, Atlantis! safe travels through the universe, and come back home to us safely, and with new knowledge!
to unfurl an adventure
11pm in Iceland, the sun was still strong.
to be home from iceland now, it is like a dream. before that adventure, we dreamed of it, while it happened, it seemed unreal, and now to be home, i have begun to reflect on the dreams before the trip, the dreams during it, the dreams after … there are layers upon layers of idealization and fantasy, and crisscrossings and foldings over of the past and future, here in my present thoughts.what will all of it mean? for a lifetime i will be inventing and reinventing What Iceland Was in my personal narrative, and the constant (sometimes quiet, sometimes loud) unfurling of that storytelling will be an adventure in itself.
this all reminds me of a feeling of a scene toward the end of Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002), where Kelvin narrates this while the rain falls:
Earth. Even the word sounded strange to me now… unfamiliar. How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter? I tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live. I followed the current. I was silent, attentive, I made a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand, and perform the millions of gestures that constitute life on earth. I studied these gestures until they became reflexes again. But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong, and somehow I was wrong about everything.
we went to the moon today
or at least it seemed that way. we walked all over volcanoes, and beautiful scenes of desolation. present among the crew today were: sigurbjörg, isabella, hilda jana, ingvar, henry, myself, and a mysterious and compelling hungarian footballer whose name sounds like CC. it was only because of the graciousness of hilda jana and ingvar that the rest of us were able to go to this other planet some distance away (þakka þér kærlega fyrir).
moments:
Isabella beholds the wonder
Birch trees lunge toward white sky, out of volcano
In a cave, in a fissure, the water particles rising as steam
And this scene most otherworldly, starring the brave sigurbjörg, who disappears with hilda jana as ingvar leads the way into the Cloud…which reminds me of this, from the Cloud of Unknowing:
And if ever you come to this cloud, and make a home there and take up the work of love as I urge you, there is something else you must do as this cloud is above you, and between you and your God, you must put a cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and all the creatures that have ever been made.
