my darling Saturn

Hello my beauty
you spin and sail slowly
with your paper-thin rings in silence.
Everything in its place
eon ofter eon.
In your one slow pass around the sun
I have been born and grown to thirty.

One of your moons has lakes and weather.
Another spews water into space.
Your rings of pebbles are beyond art.
Tiny shephard moons keep the ring-beauty in place.
I could go on and on.
About dazzling beauty.
About baffling mystery.

But here on Earth,
We've got other things to worry about.
How to pay the bills,
and well basically, how to pay the bills.

And so science is what we see on TV.
Crafted and contrived by the feudal priest-lords.

Science is explained by past heroes.
Past heroes
who were somehow fearless enough
to dare to be curious.

Those were different times.

Now it's all figured out.

And so.
Saturn has a hexagon at its north pole.
A hexagon floating in the clouds as storms swirl around it.
We can send ships to Mars and back
but can't imagine how to do that:
how to float a hexagon in stormy clouds.

The photograph of the century. CNN et al, seemed not to care. Far from bolting upright in their seats like I did, the scientific community offered up not a peep. In a week the photo and story were buried in banality.

A fabulous, unexplainable image is beamed back to Earth, from a craft sent to find the unknown, and no one is even curious? Hail victory to the powers that be. The powers that be assuming for themselves more and more of free peoples' power.

But I do not accept this defeat.

My darling Saturn, queen of the deep, born as I was on Saturday, I am amazed by you.
In ages hence, a free people may come to care how you can make a hexagon stand in your clouds. Until then, forgive them because they are too damn busy worrying about how to get by in one of the richest places on this rich, rich planet.

I am not defeated.
I look out, far above the castles of the petty feudal lords, and I am amazed at what I do not know. Yet I know that it is of the same stuff as me. A hexagon standing in your stormy clouds. Indeed.

I stared at you tonight through hazy city skies.
In thanks.

a hexagon on saturn!

There's a hexagon on the north pole of Saturn.
I repeat, there is a hexagon, in the clouds of Saturn. Bigger than our whole planet. This awesome thing has been there for at least 25 years. A perfect hexagon in the clouds. How do you do that?

I'm stunned and in awe and my ponder muscle has hit the wall, and is still going...

Why does no one else seem to care.
What happened to curiosity?

I mean really! Why aren't scientists jumping up and down in front of TV cameras and insisting on missions to Saturn...with HAL...

What happened to us?

There is a hexagon in the clouds on the north pole of Saturn!
(thank god it's not a pentagon)
A hexagon in the clouds on the north pole of the sixth planet. Arthur C Clark where are you now? Where have all the scientists gone?

my anniversary

I grew up in a stable American family. We moved many times to various suburbias. I was a good student with good grades, therefore it seemed to me that I had a good grasp on things.

In the summer after my junior year at college (mechanical engineering, honor student) I went to Europe with a student tour/thing. I have never been the same.

My world view was thrust back in my face. My world view was the American standard, a two dimensional cut-out from a happy meal. Confronted with a greater, more subtle, more interesting reality, it was clear that I was stupid. I didn’t like that. And I wanted to know what I didn’t know.

So I made a plan.

I would finish university, get a job, pay back my loans, save money, and leave America. A one way ticket. And don’t come back for at least one year.

I set myself a date, five years in the future, fixing it in my stubborn mind. On that date I would leave my American life, and go see something else. I prepared myself with German and French classes, art history, architecture, and stuff like that.

And on my target date, I left my friends, a glorious girlfriend (truly glorious), and my American life. (I still bleed a little from those wounds.)

April 1, 1987.

Twenty years ago. (holy shit! twenty years.)

It’s been quite a ride.

dangerously joyous

Beyond my computer screen
birds are singing in the morning sun
singing because they can, I suppose
singing because it’s morning and not yet too hot.
Already I have the fan on
blowing steadily in my direction.
Dang,
our fat red dog
is snoring
cicadas are droning
and someone is moving pots around
downstairs in the kitchen.
There is a secret joy in my belly.
I feel loose and dreamy, like the day in me has not yet woken.
I am glad without knowing why
I feel strange,
dangerously joyous
too aware that I am alive.