“Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind,” read the plaque screwed to aluminum panel of Lunar Module Eagle. A man from Wapakoneta, Ohio and a man from Montclair, New Jersey descended with the Eagle to a mass of igneous and basalt rock. The mass was reported as once volcanic, a twin of sorts to molten sun, it was feminine, it guided the tides, it sorted time and transitions, it encouraged introspection, registering the subconscious, it evaluated best and worst angles, what must align precisely enough for total or partial eclipse, superstitions were ascribed to its hue, but most of all, what everyone could agree on, was that it allegorized the struggle between light and dark, what is veiled and what is not veiled. The man from Ohio uttered, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," whereas the man from Jersey demurred, “Magnificent desolation.” If Armstrong sounded assured, then Aldrin sounded in awe of a cosmography that could never be understood in full. Armstrong packed no books for his travel. Aldrin packed The Autobiography of Robert H. Goddard, creator of the first liquid-fueled rocket. He supplemented the gesture, that of knowledge, with that of belief, bringing wine and wafers blessed by presbyters. There is helpful ritual in the abyss, if you will it, Aldrin might have said. What could primeval world be? What purpose would it serve? Would it banish the principle of purpose or glory? Would it need ordering, or hierarchical systems? Would utility, economy be obsolete, and thus utopia realized? Would a world that does not touch back, or respond in the way one had imagined or hoped, prove dystopia? Would there be others who, too, lie down in the grass and watch the stars, chewing limits and law, weightless, in defiance of gravity? For these answers or clarifications Le Guin, Gurdjieff, Sturgeon, Gibson and Saint-Exupery remain best sought after. A leading military man frisbeed to outer space will ask how or why. He will write radio jingles (slogans) or in the best of scenarios two words that might round to Miltonic verse. He will get in a physical altercation over grainy footage, doubts of man on moon, but no one can fault him for asking more of the unknowable, the motes of dust and glass that command our attention and hope forevermore.
-Katie Calderon