To space and back! On its own accord, the recent quick shuttle trips of two rich men and their pals to the void beyond Earth’s atmosphere is a sign that free will, plus lots of resources, still works.
However, the motive – to promote big ticket suborbital tourism – makes the conscience part of a complex equation on equity debatable.
Be that as it may, I am happy for Richard, Jeff and others for candidly showing billions of earthlings what it was like to take a quick glimpse of the globe from the window of a capsule and not from a curator’s table. Seeing them enjoy a float was a bonus.
Mr. Shallow Pockets may aptly compare the expensive Cloud 9 adventure to a theme park Ferris wheel ride that can only pleasure one with a bird’s panoramic view of affordable Planet Earth.
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Wait. No one needs to be wealthy to go to space. No one needs to be an “astronaut” to claim a bit of space.
Frankly, I am among those who desire to don a spacesuit, aping the crew of spacecrafts made in some distant alien fantasy workshop called Hollywood.
Throwback (with interruptions): The want may have been influenced by sci-fi tales in comic magazines, B&W TV and movies. Remember Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Interstellar Battlestar Galactica?
Or the historic July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing and the Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin moonwalk? (Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean version is another story. It might have been a walk By the Light of the Silvery Moon.)
How about a moment in a not-so-distant past? About five decades ago, three teenage peers and I lay flat on a grassy hill fronting the seminary building. We stared upwards and, in silent appreciation, breathed into our young minds the awesome display of celestial brightness that illuminated the night sky. The twinkling stars and constellations, the white mist of the Milky Way and the tails of streaking flashes were all there. (Just to be clear, no tent was stolen. And we were not in a park encampment.)
Near the end of winter last year, I was on a hospital bed on observation quarantine for five days. I had nothing with me except my clothes and wallet. Near the bed was a computer that I never turned on. The option to keep away from techno gizmos paid off. Rest was of great help to wellness. Recalling and meditating on good memories cached and cherished in my heart and mind proved better. Yes, I peeked through the glass pane expecting to be amazed by a clear night sky. Alas! The wintry air blocked the cosmic sights. (A head bang to see stars? Not me. It hurts!)
Really! I might have napped longer than Rip Van Winkle to have skipped what occurred between then and now. As far as I can remember, then was the last time my naked eye had ever observed such a celestial wonder, which I’d love to see once more in my lifetime.
If not on me, perhaps a clear glittering evening may be made available for my grandchildren. (The sky is the langit. The future of space admiration is in the horizon.)
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Quite interesting! Whatever was recently achieved near the space layer was nothing new. Whether olden fact or fiction, it had been written and chronicled. Further, it could be seen in awe-inspiring magazine pictures.
People were right to paraphrase a line delivered by Filipino drama actor Cherie Gil in the movie Bituing Walang Ningning that goes “Nothing but a second-rate trying hard copycat.”
Book a read, read a book. See space at its best through photographs that describe the solar system in more than a thousand words. Listen to the stories of real astronauts and cosmonauts, and understand what was felt and learned from exploring space.
(A quick note: Argonauts are not spacemen. The Argonauts is Toronto’s professional football team.)
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Just the same, keep staring higher as can be. Beyond the moon and the stars and heavenly bodies, God is staring back. Keep the faith; stay with Him who is best in making sunshine and moonlit dreams come true.
God is good. He delights in His creation. He will stick to His covenant with Noah, a promise never to again mess with and get rid of living things and creatures in the planet.
I have faith in mankind who replicates the image and likeness of God. But I have serious doubts, concerns and issues about a few loudmouths whose thoughts and actions prescribe the bad and the ugly and all circumstances and situations that put the health and safety of others at risk.
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Man can build a biblical tower of Babel or mythically soar near the sun like Icarus.
However, beware when Mother Nature rules “You are grounded!”
Neither cheering nor jeering, EmEn had been observing the world and perhaps saying: “You are smoking hot and so fired up! In some parts, you are arid and dry.” (with reference to wildfires, toxic smoke and widespread drought); “You drink too much.” (with reference to rising water levels, iceberg meltdowns, too much rain, typhoons and hurricanes, flashfloods); “You are so shaken!” (with reference to earthquakes, tornadoes, sinkholes and collapses); and “You are in a blast?” (with reference to volcanic eruptions).
Oh, Gee! Disasters, calamities and catastrophes are never ending stories of humanity. If only Adam and Eve ate the snake rather than the apple, perhaps we all would be living happily ever after.
What bothers me is that no one likes to be held accountable for any of the world’s mishaps; much less for all the world’s woes.
Those who say they can fix the mess almost always play the Name-and-Blame Game. Moreover, they almost always ignore the problem and keep themselves distant from the death and suffering.
A thing EmEn and environmentalists will never say is “You’re viral!” (as in you-know-what very well).
So many secrets are locked away in Pandora’s Box; thus, very little will ever be known about Covid-19, the most fatal worldwide scourge in recent years.
Hopefully, the saga of the Coronavirus will end with a double dose of vaccine. Not a booster more, please.
Understand that either amid soil or in a vacuum, man’s space will always be his eternal frontier.
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Let us spend more time in a universe of our own making, where the bidding of a dream either goes beyond the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow or follows the fleeting streak of a fading star on a clear night.
Imagination, it is called.
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Do the lyrics of Pure Imagination, sung by Gene Wilder in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory tell you something?
Perhaps, the meaningful words in John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Imagine will.
Willing and able? Then let us sing.
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Imagine that we are off to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
No stranger at the Olympics, Imagine was performed and heard at London 2012, Turin 2006 and Atlanta 1996 Games and, most recently, at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. Once more, the classic highlighted the start of the 2020 Tokyo Games on July 23, 2021.
The event report of Today’s Kerry Breen was most enlightening. Breen noted the reverence at the Olympic Stadium as Tokyo’s Suginami Junior Chorus sang Imagine’s first verse, “while a replica of the earth, made up of more than 1,800 drones, rotated in the sky overhead.”
After the chorus, celebrities followed through with pre-recorded video clips. “John Legend stood for the Americas, and Keith Urban represented his home country, Australia. Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz represented Europe, while Afropop star Angélique Kidjo represented Africa.”
On Twitter, Yoko Ono wrote: “John and I were both artists and we were living together, so we inspired each other. The song Imagine embodied what we believed together at the time. John and I met – he comes from the West and I come from the East – and still we are together.”
Breen continued: This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the song, which was written in 1971. In 1980, Lennon said that he saw the goal of asking people to imagine peace as similar to carrying the Olympic torch.
“We’re not the first to say ‘Imagine no countries’ or ‘Give peace a chance,’ but we’re carrying that torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it hand to hand, to each other, to each country, to each generation,” Lennon said in an interview with Rolling Stone, his final interview before he was killed three days later. “And that’s our job.”
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Midway into the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that will culminate on August 8, 2021, I can only wish competing Canadians and Filipino athletes the best of luck.
They have worked so hard to participate and claim a medal, whatever the colour, in the Tokyo Games. They are humanity’s champions among the strong, the resilient and the disciplined.
May you claim your rightful space at the podium. #####