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I woke up around 6am this morning, contemplating observation of the happy arrival of the Year of the Sheep (the black sheep, which I figured had to be my year). Instead, I discovered that NASA had just lost contact with Columbia, and waited in the terrible silence until the passing minutes made acknowledgment of the truth unavoidable.
No hope for the shuttle or her crew. They're gone. Despite the emergency gear in place since Challenger, the conditions under which it would be of any use are so limited that there's no chance they made it. Now reports are coming in from across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas. Debris raining down on Ft Worth, Plano, Nacogdoches, Corsicana and the southeast pine country. Fires. Still nothing certain as to the cause, of course, although the leading theory at present seems to be that a piece of insulation coming loose was what made the ship lose attitude control before the breakup. At least it's been confirmed that the altitude at which it occurred rules out terrorism -- though I still anticipate that belief to have currency with some people, along with conspiracy theories that the US blew it up to justify a war that has increasingly been losing support at home and abroad.
I have been around a very long time. A lot of Januarys. In one of them, when I was very young and another unpopular war was going on, a fire took Apollo 1 and broke my heart. In another, I was newly arrived in the freezing boonies when Challenger rooted me in the middle of the room, too numb and dislocated even to notice the mug of scalding tea I'd just dropped all over myself. And now this, one day off. These days, my outside is warm, and the shuttles rattle my house as they boom overhead on their approach to Edwards. It's always brought me a sort of wild joy. I hope it still will.
Disasters of any kind give me the intense need to act. Couldn't stay in, couldn't find calm in the coffee shop ritual... I know, tragedies large and small happen constantly. People die every day -- far too many of them innocents, as we've been made very aware. Yet somehow, this remains different, and I just can't seem to be still right now.
Only yesterday, someone's comment sent me back to one of my favourite books, which I hadn't read in some while, and I can't help but be reminded of part of it as I think of the families, friends and comrades of the Columbia crew:
Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.
Rick Husband
William McCool
David Brown
Laurel Clark
Kalpana Chawla
Michael Anderson
Ilan Ramon
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realitycek's journal
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