Outer Space and...flying....

Ever since I can remember, the universe has fascinated me. As a kid, I spent long minutes "contemplating" on the universe wondering about this apparently infinite expanse of space and I loved looking at different pictures of the universe in encyclopaedias. I learnt the names of the vegetables about the same time as I learnt the names of the planets - but the former didn't seem half as captivating (something I've mentioned elsewhere). After that initial burst of enthusiasm and the initial excitement of learning and seeing what I could about the bits and pieces - I've forever scratched my head about outer space. Now my fascination isn't what anyone would or could possibly call a scientific understanding. I would have loved to understand more of what they talk about these days - I really would - the physicists with their big bangs and the black holes and the point of the beginning or the moment of beginning. I've tried reading but little of it do I understand. Once upon a time, I fantasized about being an astrophysicist. And not one who just understood the physical and chemical properties of the universe. Oh no. Not a piddly one but a great one. I knew it was never going to happen so it was nice to fanatsize about. Anyway...

Outer space seems to be a world far, so far away from the here and now. And what I harbour for it is still a fascination mixed with a deep and silent awe. The thought of the universe sometimes trickles in when I'm sitting in a somewhat noisy coffee-shop working on something peculiarly mundane, over-hearing one young girl telling another that she's going out for dinner, a group of people talking about different matters, someone laughing softly, another noisy one talking loudly into his cell-phone, some sort of music playing in the background, people walking by the coffee-shop. In that sudden moment - time freezes. I look around and peer and stare and I wonder what it is that we humans are doing here. I can't help it. Sometimes I want to burst out with a laugh or a cry or a shout - "Look. Look at us. We're here. We're on a planet in a very modest solar system of this Milky Way, floating around in the Universe..." Of course I don't do anything. I just sit and peer and stare and go and look at whatever it is that I'm supposed to be looking at with a grim look of determination. Sometimes then I might think of a snowflake or something else, and smile. The breathtaking beauty and the grottiness and the staleness and the surreal - I don't know what to make of it all when I think about the universe and our world....How is it all possible? - for one thing ! One of the side-thoughts that my meagre mind sometimes wonders over is, what (on earth?) happens to those astronauts when they get "lost" in space... "And why should it be any different?" - My brighter self retorts. They end up the way any and all human beings do. But it must be different living and looking and breathing and dying in space somewhere. Being able to see the Earth as a "pale blue dot". Please watch this video with Carl Sagan's famous speech in the background. The sound on this one is a tad unclear though....I show it to my class every semester and the students are silent for some seconds after it is over.

Sometimes a strange emotion fills me when I hear of those scientists working and living and researching in the Antarctic and Arctic...they come up with these little news clips on the BBC every now and again. I don't know whether I've ever seen myself doing any of that - although when I first read about the great explorers of the early 20th century, in primary school, I did think that they had indeed been heroic. Once when a friend asked me, via e-mail, where I was and what I was doing I had told her that I was in Alaska (that's about as far North as I can see myself...). I also said that I was working on animal-human interactions (reindeer - what else) - or maybe I didn't but I told her that I was in one of the unusual places (not Fairbanks nor Anchorage). I got so absorbed in the telling of my tale that by the time I sent off my e-mail I honestly believed that I was in Alaska, roughing it out - and felt rather sad that I wasn't. I've never wanted to be an astronaut though. The idea of actually living in a tube with some 7 others and living in those smelly body suits for months on end - doesn't appeal to me now and never did.

But I rather like the idea of flying...and some minutes ago, while outside, I got a wistful little jolt after many months upon seeing one of those bi-planes flying low. I got wondering about Amelia Earhart, that rather amazing woman, who was a visiting prof/career counsellor at Purdue in the mid 1930s. In fact she was on a leave of absence from Purdue when she made her "final" flight in 1937. In the first semester that I was here, a friend, who also lived in the dorms with me, used to egg me on to take flying lessons because I would whoop every time I'd see those bi-planes flying low. The only thing that I didn't do was physically run "after" them. While these and some other aeroplane-related thoughts and images were swiveling around in the morning, a thought caught me by surprise. I really could join the Purdue flying school for some flying lessons. It may not be a bad thing to watch the Earth and be suspended in air somewhere while actually flying a plane....Don't know where I'll be next. We'll see...back to the real world for now.

P.S: A hundred thanks to google. I didn't even know about Matilde Moisant. She was born in Earl Park, Indiana, and she was flying around in 1911...Here's a link.

9/11/2010