What to do about the endeavor of space exploration? Does it matter like it used to? Did it ever matter? Does its relevance live up to the challenges and expenses it necessitates? Does it capture the hearts and minds and dreams of humanity?
Should it?
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Comments(2) I think I’m in Asia, but there’s no way to tell for sure. There was no grand ceremony marking the epic milestone that this beast of steel and iron officially crossed the boundary dividing Europe with its gigantic distant relative to the East. No voice calling out over the intercom (not that I would have entirely understood it anyhow) that the known, more or less civilized world had been abandoned in our wake and we were now, like it or not, subjects to the exotically barren expanse of the Siberian tundra, in all its romantic, intimidating mystery.
Asia could use a welcoming sign. Nebraska has a welcoming sign. They even include a fun fact about the state’s character on the sign greeting drivers eastbound from Colorado: “Welcome to Nebraska: the Arbor Day State.” Its a genius of a sign, actually, because there are, everyone knows, no trees in Nebraska and thus, one would presume, no apparent reason for the entire state being named after a day that exonerates the deciduous. It may screw with your mind but it’ll at least give you something perplexing to think about; the alternative being suicide by sudoko, which some road-weary passengers have been driven to in maddening attempts to ease the boredom of the tortuous drive across Interstate 80.
No ceremony, no announcement, no sign. But I’m over it.
Asia. I’ve gotta be in Asia by now.
The archway is silent as I approach, slowly, peering around corners like a secret agent from Mission Impossible. There are no people. I wish there were people. Someone to hear me yell when the mob pulls up in their jet black tinted-window conversion van and someone with a hooded mask jumps out and throws me in the back. At least then someone will know what has become of me. But there isn’t a sound, except for the periodic distant rush of a car out on the main avenue of Leninsky Prospekt. There’s a full moon. That’s a bad sign, obviously. The sky is clear, crisp, full of stars. At least it’s a nice night.
The park in the middle of the U is empty. The guy with the hand in his pocket is nowhere to be found. I puff out my chest—thinking this will definitely help deter potential attackers—and walk down the parking lot road towards the entrance to my apartment. There’s movement ahead. Shadows behind a rusty compact car next to the dumpster. I approach the car carefully, making slow, deliberate steps in a wide-sweeping arc away from the car’s front end. It’s just a cat. I’m safe. Home free. I’m at the door and I press the metal tab on my keychain against a similar tab on the door and a bell rings, allowing me to open the large, brown, steel door.
The door to the tiny foyer opens without objection and I see that the inner door is now wide open as well. They had to take the whole lock off the door.
Natalia Alexeyevna is still awake and is talking to two of her friends in the kitchen when I walk in. I smile and introduce myself to her friends, not really sure if I want a language immersion lesson at this time of night.
But they are fascinated with me. They ask what I’m studying, where I’m from, what life is like in America, what my family is like. The excitement of the attempted break-in and subsequent door-opening fiasco is forgotten.
“Well, I’m taking language courses here in Moscow. At the Moscow International University. Do you know it? This is my last semester of university.”
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It takes three hours for the police to remove the door. Near midnight, we finally get a call at the apartment that I can go back. No one broke in. The door’s lock was too strong for the crow bar and the would-be intruder had mangled it in a failed attempt to break in. Probably to get me, right? Why else would someone break in there? They have nothing. Everything in the apartment is at least forty years old. There are no beds. Natalia Alexeyevna and Kirill and I all sleep on couches in different rooms. I sleep in the study, Kirill has the bedroom and Natalia Alexeyvna converts the living room hard foam couch into a bed by placing a single comforter on top of it.
Kirill is a biologist and works at the university. He studies butterflies. There are hundreds of cases of dead butterflies pinned in rows and rows in cabinets in the apartment’s only hallway. He has all of his butterfly pinning equipment in his room, including a huge jar of the most awful smelling clear liquid I’ve ever encountered, which I assume to be some sort of formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde? Really? People can have that contained in glass jars in their apartments?
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I want to tell them I am on the epic journey of all journeys. That I am a modern coming-of-age-through-experience hero, establishing myself through adventure and hardship and examination, trying to gain a foothold in this cynical, selfish world of fast food, reality television, and celebrity tabloids granting instant gratification of the self-prescribed numbing of mind and soul; that I am a man of principle and honor and truth in all their over-hyped romantic glory; that I am not merely another carefully groomed product of the System—a spoiled suburban only child whose parents used to buy him Legos on Christmas Eve when they thought they had given him the right present—the perfect present—the giant pirate ship that was shown on all the commercials during Saturday morning cartoons—only to find out that it was not the right pirate ship, a pirate ship—sure—but not the pirate ship from the commercials and they would have to drive to three different stores to find the elusive frigate after cutting out of Christmas Eve dinner early in a spirited attempt to dodge the dreaded room-saturating gloom of a disappointed child on Christmas; that this façade of righteousness against the monotonous conventionality of our collective societal non-awareness that I’ve been masquerading around the globe wasn’t just a string of big words thrown together to sound worldly and all-knowing but a glimpse into a piece of true wisdom and understanding—a genuine piece of true wisdom and understanding, damnit—of the human condition in spite and because of an upbringing emerged in the very thick of the collective societal non-awareness itself; that even a spoiled American white kid could bring himself up out of his own ignorance and contradictory flip-flopping self-pity and pride to see, touch, feel—if only briefly—something genuine and pure and real and alive in the world.
“I’m on holiday,” is what I say instead. I don’t know how to say all that other stuff in Russian.
What is this damn self-righteousness? Why can’t it just go away?
The narrow walkway runs down the length of the car, separating our enclave from the others. On the other side of this walkway is another bench/bed and above that is another bunk (in which the four-year-old is now thoroughly tucked in). So each “compartment” potentially accommodates six passengers and there are nine compartments making up this third-class car. Essentially, traveling in third class Russian trains is like one big slumber party with 54 of your friends minus the fort-making, chocolate chip cookie eating and the fact that they are actually all strangers—nice strangers, mostly, but still strangers and Russian strangers at that, meaning strangers who don’t shower (not that there are showers in third class to give them the option to shower anyway).
I twist and kick until I’m on my back again, staring up at the blank white underside of the luggage rack an arm’s reach away. My right leg is turned awkwardly at the knee to avoid the chain attaching the bunk to the wall at my feet. I’m still wearing the lightweight khaki hiking pants and 100% polyester T-shirt purchased by my mother at a specialty backpacking retail store that I’ve had on since I boarded last night and it’s still too hot to lie under the only covers I have: a single, hospital-ish, plain white sheet. I try not to move around too much so I stop sweating, but that’s been a lost cause since I stepped onboard. I also have to pee but there’s a line for the bathroom and I don’t feel like going through the ordeal of hoisting myself back up here just yet. Russians have an innate talent for bunk-hoisting. I have already been shown up by a pair of four-foot-tall, eighty-year-old Russian grandmothers whose gravity-defying leaps into upper bunks would qualify them for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not if one of the producers of that show ever decides to take the Trans-Siberian railroad and happens to witness the feat. Maybe when it’s all said and done, I’ll be able to hold my own but for now I’ll just hold it and remain staring at the luggage rack above my head.
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