Something about David Bowie's death got to me. Maybe it's because he never seemed old to me. And only old people die. Right? Here I go waxing nostalgic. Here's a poem from Three Part Harmony, a chatbook I published many years ago with two poet friends.
David Bowie has had so many faces I couldn't pick just one to go at the top of this post. It came down to the fact that a static photo would not do. No matter of him as which persona or in which costume or with which face.
'Space Oddity,' my favorite David Bowie song, was released as a single in July, 1969. The above video was made at the same time.
I was a young adult and the song captured my sense of being hurled into the unknown with no tangible life support. Instructions from Ground Control (advice from my society) seemed too conventional. Completely irrelevant to my own weightless, planetless state.
At the same time Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon. He traveled through that weightless, planetless state to arrive safely on the moon and opened the entire universe to humanity. Me included.
Like Bowie, I tried on a vast array of personas. I used to think our wanderings were peculiar to the 60's generation. Not so. Just ask someone--anyone--from the generation who survived the Great Depression and World War II to today's Millennials who try to make sense of their world.
And here is where and who I am. I write about life in space. Murder on Ceres. I follow the International Space Station on Facebook. I celebrate each new step into space by many governments around the world and by as many private businesses. These things didn't exist in 1969.
Tomorrow is still unknowable and scary for all us Major Toms. And conventional wisdom still does not relate.
Bowie spoke for me and Neil Armstrong spoke to me. Now they're both gone. But I'm still here and as long as I am, I've got to be willing to make that leap.
WE are still here and WE must be willing to make that leap.
video from YouTube First space music video. Commander Chris Hadfield performed 'Space Oddity' on the International Space Station, 44 years after Bowie's original video.
If you have time and even if you don't, the internet is out there to inspire, intrigue, and irritate you. I use it much the same way that I've used the dictionary all my life. I have a particular word to look up. I find it and along the way I find another that I must check out, which of course brings up something else. Before I know it, hours have fled, the laundry's not done, and the dogs want to be fed.
Today, before I decided on my I-word, I was surfing http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-to-z-challenge-sign-uplist-2014.html. This is a list of bloggers participating in the April A to Z Blogging Challenge. I've been dipping into the blogs randomly, sometimes because I like its title, sometimes because it's next on the list, and sometimes I click on one by mistake.
This morning I clicked on Amrita @ The Book Drifter (BO.) Who could resist The Book Drifter?
Oooooo. Shiny. Pretty colors. An ammonite! I am hooked. And a poem. Not just any poem, but a witty, word play, anagram. This was my inspiration for today.
I've been enamoured of ammonites since my first divorce thirty-six years ago. Lake Texoma's bed is limestone. (If you research limestone . . . But that's another story. And so is Lake Texoma.) Suffice it to say that limestone is often rich in fossils. Ammonites are the most unusual (at least to me) and certainly the biggest fossils on the shores of Lake Texoma.
My small pieces of non-iridescent ammonites
My as yet unpublished book Murder on Ceres would not be possible for me to write without the internet. NASA's website is invaluable. http://www.nasa.gov/ They have amazing photos. If you've never surfed NASA, you're in for a treat.
