Do you care to read about my personal history? I’m never sure whether to lead with it. I always assume it’s uninteresting. The ideas. The ideas are the thing! The messenger? Pah!
If you just want the ideas; the poem that carries the title of this post, skip down to (or past) the video.
If you want it’s history, well
Ten, eleven years ago when I lived in West Philly before Scientific Animism before The Overstory before Braiding Sweetgrass before Substack I thought about space all the time— interplanetary humanity was just around the corner, I was sure of it and thinking about it makes one a better person! I was sure of that too. A friend organized Ignite Philly. (In an evening of Ignite talks, each speaker has a strict five minutes, and an auto-progressing slide deck where each slide has a strict 15 seconds.) I said to friend, "hey friend, I want to give an Ignite talk." Friend agreed. This was my TED-inspired title & description:
Title
Earth Clouds are the Best Clouds: How Cosmic Daydreams Increase Empathy
Description
Seriously, other planets don’t have it so good.
As we anticipate a near future in which human civilization is dispersed among multiple planets, let’s reflect on how great we on Team Earth have it. The biggest thing those suckers on other worlds are missing out on? The mthrfckn WATER CYCLE, yo! We have, like, PUDDLES! And RAIN! And holy crap, OCEANS.
When the settlers of other worlds look up from their new surfaces, there’s one thing they definitely won’t be seeing: CLOUDS. Or, they’ll ALWAYS see clouds, and never the stars! Let’s celebrate our home planet and learn how dreaming about The Great Big Out There makes us better citizens of The Teeny Tiny Right Here.
Friend accepted. Said that my title & description were, and I quote, "Trippy. As. Hell." It was 2015. I took my laptop to Clark Park. Early evening, early November. Sat on a park bench, orange-tipped branches dazzling sodium lamp street lights gently fascinating my gaze while my fingers fiddled stream of consciousness in verse. (Somehow lots of line breaks just felt easier. Still does.) I liked my little verses— the granddaughter on Mars grandson on Venus, the trip to Titan and the stellar dance of our nearest neighbors— but there was no moral; no Aesop's wisdom drop, no tidy TED ending. I never really circled 'round to that "how [blah blah] increase empathy" thing. "Should I?" I asked friend. Nah, he said. You already kind of do. And I think then my style was born? Discovered. Solidified. This whole "write it in verse" thing. This whole "scientifically rigorous, but make it transcendent" thing. This whole "transcend, but keep it grounded" thing. But apart from being Unimportant Me's backstory: Is it Scientific Animism, this piece? To which I say: Maybe? A little? The considering-the-place-based-spiritual-longings-of-humans-on-other-worlds thing. The imaging-new-and-evolving-religions thing. The gobsmacked-awe-of-Earth thing.
I want it to be a children's book. A children's book author gave me an edit; gave me feedback. And though I make time for so many other things, I never quite make make it back to those notes; never quite go the last bit of the way to a finished draft, a query letter, an agent search. The version below is a half-edit. Fourth stanza swapped from the stellar dance of Centauri A & B to the stationary sun of Proxima. The video's the original. (Which also has a curse word.) I hope you enjoy both. I'd love to give you a finished version, but that doesn't exist yet and between my last full-moon post and this here new moon some humans flew around the moon. Space is happening; space is in the air. So here's some space for you, but grounded. I hope you enjoy.
Earth Clouds are the Best Clouds
Someday, sooner than you think,
your granddaughter will immigrate to Mars.
She will pack her bags and leave
the only home any earth-creature has ever known,
and take up residence on a new sphere.
And like so many immigrants,
she will learn to find beauty in her new environment.
She will learn to find beauty in the indoor gardens;
the red cave walls;
the timing of Phobos and Deimos, her small new moons;
in tawny noon
and blue sunset.
With her people, she will create culture of the desert,
she will brew red ale
and sing hymns rife with metaphors
of dust.
She will celebrate stars,
shining clear through thin atmosphere,
just outside the habitat,
with no clouds to ever obstruct.
She will find the parts of herself that resonate
with her new surroundings.
She will mold, from a strange and alien landscape,
a home.
Someday, sooner than you think,
her grandson will immigrate to Venus.
To the thick clouds above Venus,
and live in floating cities.
He will forget life on the surface,
because his is a surface that will
crush like an ocean;
char like a furnace;
melt with unending
sulfuric acid rain.
His people tell stories of falling
and dream nightmares of flame.
He praises High Wind;
delights in No Landmark;
spots swirling sentries soaring
through The Yellow,
those clouds far below.
Someday, sooner than you think,
his granddaughter will immigrate to Titan,
that dazzling satellite of Saturn.
She will sail on cryogenic lakes
and surf the towering, slow-motion waves.
Flight
will be a popular pastime on Titan,
because air is thick,
and gravity thin,
and humans can learn to fly by our own arm strength,
like a bug, or a bat,
or a bird, or a stunt plane.
Her white will be orange;
her rainbow, redder than red.
The darkness, her temple.
The twilight, her friend.
From above, Titan looks featureless,
a glowing orb of unending cloud cover.
She will learn to find home in that
dim orange haze;
in that absence of stars.
Someday, sooner than you think,
her grandchild will immigrate
to a whole new star.
To Proxima Centauri,
the star nearest ours,
with its planet, like our moon,
locked in synchronous rotation.
They will live in perpetual dawn;
the pink light eternal;
long shadows unmoving;
their sun always watching
from low on horizon;
their temperate zone draped
near the boundary with Night.
For vacations they’ll journey
out to dark; out to cold
to watch lights in the sky
(including our sun) –
and these little lights move!
How disorienting.
How unsettling that heavens
are not fixed
like the ground.
They’ll find Earth so bizarre,
with our wandering guardian
rolling round in the sky
and disappearing at night.
Wherever they go—
your adaptive descendants—
they’ll find the beauty;
they’ll make a home.
But they’ll always tell stories
of the planet that spawned them—
the cool summer starlight,
the warm winter snow.
Waterfalls, puddles, and rain you can drink!
Oceans that stretch out beyond the horizon!
From out there we’ll all seem
so similar and small,
all our difference rendered same
by the distance of the vantage.
And how vulnerable; how precious
our whole majestic planet!
Just a dot among the stars!
Or less, depending on the season!
They’ll get videos,
after great time-delay,
from loved ones back on Earth,
and those clouds,
Earth’s shocking clouds,
will always startle them.
This is a treat of prose/poetry. I watched the video first and I have to say the concept of aging in the same season of your birth is such a powerful metaphor. Splendid stuff.