The Space Traveler Pities Us, and: The Space Traveler’s Calculus, and: The Space Traveler’s Missives, and: The Space Traveler Falls in Love

The Space Traveler Pities Us

Roy G. Biv is a friend, but onlyone of many. Sound too in rangesthat jerk your dogs’ heads sharply around,a hard calligraphy on air to springthe radar dishes of their ears. Listenin whatever range you can, human—it’s not that you know dust onlyin handfuls, but that the toolsby which you know it make itonly dust. Out here are creatureswho see in it the handiwork of God:not in the cheesy metaphorical mannerof your evangelicals, but with beautifulliteralness: the fine-handling fingerprintsof the first cause smudging the glassof each grain. So I don’t blame youif hearing silence where is musicbeyond your range you nominatenothing, or if you end after violetthe spectrum of visible light. Buteven on your world, the least of youdischarges colors he can’t see, his bodydispelling silence in nearly all registers.Imagine yourselves as I see you—even the reduced form looking backfrom a bathroom mirror, wokentoo early, when outside’s a snowymorning he has shortly to enter.It is an odd irony—a ready excuse forall your cynicism, even the chewedaluminum of your politicians—thatyou of all creatures are denied senseof your own radiance.

The Space Traveler’s Calculus

You? Your fate was sealed the momentyou set a ring of stones around a fire:in some Neanderthal night, the collectivetremor of northern species, and globalair circulation pausing a momentto apprehend change. I’d like to thinkthe stars, too, clarified in translucentdarkness, that for a moment allburned blue, looked downin an earnest convocation.What to say, human? That generallyby the time a trajectory becomes clear,it’s essentially completed? That causesswim in conclusions? Now you know.Now I know, too. And thoughfrom up here I’m unable to help you,I will say—pondering your world—no destination seems so important, nowork trumps my attention like yourgloved hands, tenderness conductedthrough latex and scrub brush towardall those small lives you have ruined.Perhaps a few decades from nowan interstellar cavalry will arrive—do-gooder species watching youraccelerating bleed, moved, will pullyou back from the ledge by the xof your crossed suspenders, will deposityou and such Earthly life as remainson a pristine world. Imaginethe pods launching out like beesfrom a flaming hive, the furious dronescooling with distance, and thenthe landing—chrome studs amonglong grasses, a field wide as Kansas.Fanciful? Had I been there, human,I’d have poked the Neanderthalon the shoulder, tapped my snappishfoot until he handed me that first rock.Then I’d have clocked him with it.

The Space Traveler’s Missives

So many missives. And each an attemptto say and not say, as if directstatement had undone itself—a candle melted flat into the table.Do they reach you? Do you strollout to your mailbox to find the redflag lowered, envelop hanging outlike a crab’s fighting claw?The stamp is from no Earthly polity.You soak it off in water; take outa magnifying glass to studythe alien flower, its stigma an eyethat winks at you. Do you readthe script? On warm nights, you rideyour V-max under the stars. I flymy ship over eastern Ohio; makea semaphore of the fins; tootthe engine fires in Morse Code.Others take out cell phones, postvideos on the Internet. But the textwas for you: who keep your visionlevel, your legs spread as wideas if you were mounting a horse.You know, when you rideyou look like the Marlboro Man:it’s the set of your jaw, the coolhardness, as if your skin was a metaljust lifted from snow. You removeyour...