Space

Some days have more gravity. It feels like there’s a greater meaning in the events. If only I can just find the pattern, connect the dots, see the full the picture.

War

The Iran war rages on as it starts its second month, though many Americans still refuse to call it a war in spite of the images of exploding bombs and general destruction.

It’s hard to know the toll it’s taking on innocent lives; they don’t show us that part. The closest we get are brief images of buildings with their faces blown off and living rooms with paintings still hanging on walls exposed to the sky.

We don’t see the innocents, but deep down we all know they’re lingering there, at the edges beyond the image, bedraggled, forlorn, lost and hurting.

Space: Between Us All

In my weekly email from The Marginalian, Maria Popova writes about “The Light in the Abyss Between Us,” how we don’t see or experience anything the same way as others do, even when they’re walking right beside us.

I’ve always wondered about that: Is my blue the same as your blue? Does broccoli taste the same to you as it does to me?

So what else can we do but try our best with language to find connection through the space between us. Popova quotes from Anne Enright’s novel, the wren, the wren:

“All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can look at the world in a new way. We can meet.” (Emphasis mine.)

Words: Trump’s Speech

Is that what he tried to do last night with his audience? Was he trying to reach out into the space between us so that everyone sees what he sees? Did he want us to meet?

Here’s where I get lost, and incredibly sad with the state of things. I just didn’t see it.

Nor did any of his opposition. But there are people who agree with him and as I listened to him speak, I thought to myself: “his followers will be buoyed by this speech, reassured, inspired.”

How can this be? The same words, using the same language we all use to create connection and empathy, did none of that for roughly 60% of his TV audience.

That space between us all? It really is an abyss, and the language Enright speaks of does not do the same with foes as it might do with friends.

As always, words leave their traces but they’re not the same for everyone, even when we’re all listening to them in the same historical moment.

Space: Artemis II Takes Off

Soon after they left the Earth’s surface, the images started coming in:

And there we are, our beautiful blue home with wisps of white wrapped around us. So incredibly beautiful, so strong, and yet so fragile.

At that distance, there’s land and water. There are no borders and each one of us—all living beings— are so tiny relative to the immensity of Earth, that anyone looking from out there wouldn’t know we exist.

Difference and division vanish. Individual lives vanish. Earth is all there is. I can hardly imagine how the astronauts feel, being there, because I feel such love and wonder just watching from home.

The Dots

I’m trying to trace the connections: war … space … words … space.

We’re all on this Earth, together. We see the same sky, and yet we don’t see the same world.

We name, we speak, we write, and hope to meet somewhere in the space between.

We know enough to keep trying.