By onestormynight
Digital delivery
In the example block Blogit is giving me for my opinion, all the words and letters are replaced as I begin writing. I've taken notes since I'll need to refer to them.
The suggested example was entitled "8 Planets to Visit Before You Die" - a kind of Solar System travel guide. This is to include "inspiring detailed recommendations of the best places to visit" complete with the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" with some suggested violence - "Hand Me a Gun and Ask Me Again." It is assumed the author is a "veteran traveler."
Like other spectacular events or noteworthy locations, I would need to consider the planets, the solar system, the entire universe from the perspective of tourist destinations and entertainment hotspots. Unfortunately, my veteran traveler status precludes such an undertaking.
Investing in space travel and exploration is a waste of resources. Money and time would be better spent on securing the vast satellite communications infrastructure that contributes to communications networking on planet Earth many of which are visible as part of the constellations in the night sky.
If the Kesler Syndrome holds true, many of the satellites orbiting the earth are defunct and damaged with the potential for collision and destruction to working satellites and even the space station. What systems could be put into place to stabilize this orbiting infrastructure and clean up the debris field?
I can't help but think that as a species, the human race is seeking not so much a diversion with space tourism, but a geographic cure. The grass is greener over there, if only I could get away, I need to move to get a fresh start, etc.
But there really is only one planet and it isn't disposable. With less effort than it would take to travel into space and visit another planet we could freshen our own world and our view of it. It won't happen overnight because it would require a shift in values and priorities. But it would mean that everyone - not just folks who can afford it - could make the journey.
It's comforting that human beings are made of planetary constituents, stardust. Because of the distance, we'll never be able to travel to the End of the Universe. The fact that the light of stars I see at night began its journey to the earth centuries before I was born - and vice versa - astounds me.
As a veteran traveler, I find myself interested in the opinions of other veterans living or dead. I wonder at their life experience as much as I would the opportunity of passing through the gaseous rings of Saturn - not a forward thinking view I realize, but one I can't help but hold at this stage of my life.
Lately, I've been reading the centuries old selected works of Chinese poet T'ao Ch'ien. It's amazing the books you can rediscover in your own library if you dust off the shelves once in a while! T'ao exiled himself away from official life and returned to his humble home where he spent his days farming, getting drunk, and writing poems.
His travels are limited to walks near his farm, occasionally visiting and drinking with a few passersby, and subsistence farming with the hope of getting by for another year. I can sympathize with his life and his wistful sense of loss and the passage of time, his drunkenness, and his daily round. T'ao's biographer describes drunkeness in T'ao's poetry and Chinese poetry after him as "drinking just enough wine to achieve that serene clarity of attention which he calls idleness, a state in which the isolation of a mind imposing distinctions on the world gives way to a sense of identity with the world."
I can't help but wonder at the number of remarkable lives over the centuries that slipped into oblivion with the passage of time, and our attention tuned to the present and to the future.
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