For Petronaut,
A post in which I am particularly poncy, and overuse
the word ‘and’. 3,2,1, and-
Every once
in a while someone tells me about their last two promotions, or the next
wedding or christening and I get a little pang. And out come the photos of the
last holiday in the South of France, and I do
like Pinot Noir, and that villa does look
lovely. And on the other side of the sliding door my mardy doppelganger tugs
the cord tied from my rib cage to hers, and sends pulses down the line, they
say: ‘could have been you’, ‘you’re being left behind’. Old friends that have
continued on a path whilst you, perhaps, have veered off into the woods and
lost track of which track you were supposed
to be following, but this is alright, and ooh, climbed a tree, but then spied
the finish line and remembered it was supposed to be a race, ‘how much? yes,
very reasonable, out of season, well, of course.’ And then I square my
shoulders, look myself straight in the eye and sing ‘no, we can’t all be
climbing ladders and building Roman roads up and down and
forwardforwardforward. Some of us spin, like moons and planets, we ping from
one thing to the next, and gravity isn’t up or down, it’s here or there, to me
to you; but it’s still onward and I’m here and it’s alright. I am alright.’
And just as
often, I meet other galactic travellers orbiting in the black: making it up as
we bob along. And we reach into the vacuum and dance in the darkness. And sitting
round our cosmic campfires, we never fail to acknowledge the songlines ringing
through us: making us yearn for the straight and narrow: despite all of our
travelling the ‘trajectory less travelled’, or just not getting-our-act-together.
And in those moments of intimacy with my fellow vitanauts, I feel, truly, weightless. All burden is lifted in the
moments we admit (with tears glassing our eyes and wine filling our glasses)
that though we love the open road, and wide open spaces, there is still a designated space in our
hearts for hearth and ‘home’. And maybe I could
raise chickens. But then it is time for the packing of suitcases and count
down to lift off.
Recently,
ageing has felt a lot like vertigo. It’s just a number, and each year you press
the button, plug in a different decimal and hardly notice that you ascend a
little higher, until ‘JESUS MARY AND HOLY ST JOSEPH THERE’S NOTHING TO HOLD ON
TO’. The Voyager 1 just left our solar system, and the earth shattering thing is,
it’s the furthest anything stamped with human fingerprints has ever been posted. I’m
not about to tell you that turning 30 is like standing at the edge of the solar
system, except, if for a light year you imagine the world revolves around you,
then it is, a bit. There’s something simultaneously thrilling and melancholic
about passing out of our twenties - the line we’re about to cross is only a line
because it divides what we know, or thought we knew, and what we’re about to
find out. For now, everything you know is behind you, at your back, willing you
onward. Here we go humanity, the baggage we’ve got now is coming for the long
haul, the grooves in that record are deep, this is the song we have chosen to
sing, so lets sing it loud or not at all, set the compass needle and let it
spin baby, let’s spin.
I bloody
love you Petronaut. See you when you next touch down. And, happy bloody
birthday.
No comments:
Post a Comment