I sit comfortably in a synthetic leather chair ten kilometers above the surface of the Earth. The chair is bolted to the floor, which is part of a fuselage attached to two broad wings, the whole massive assembly screaming through the atmosphere at over five hundred miles per hour. There's a lady sleeping peacefully next to me, she has too much perfume on -- not overpowering, but it is, almost. She is likely unaware of the two massive turbines roaring by our ears, as they are gulping down the black fuel like a vampire bat sucks blood. The power of petrol is astounding, I sit and marvel at the massive amounts of force produced by a man-made machine. The aircraft mocks nature. If you throw a rock, it falls to the ground after only a short time. An airplane is an ungainly, ungodly metal creature weighing many tons, and yet it soars higher and faster than an eagle.
Technology is an amazing thing. It boggles the mind, not just the airplane I'm sitting in, but the sights out the window reek of machinery. Everywhere I look I see evidence of human existence. Glaring splotches of orange light dot the darkened landscape below, nothing seems to be untouched. It is everywhere, this mess. Nowhere does it seem that the blight is completely vanished. I see rivers of automobiles far below on the great paved trails, crawling towards some Thanksgiving destination. Family, friends. Busiest travel day of they year. I feel lucky to be stuffed into the tail of a 737, jostling silently with a rank, unconcious female for some foot room.
It took me two days in beautiful weather to get to where I had flown from, a trip for the mind, body, and soul -- it seemed so long ago, mere months after all. A modern car could make the journey in less than twelve hours. My one-hundred dollar ticket would have me on the ground in Atlanta in less than two hours, 650 miles as the crow flies. It seems ridiculous how quickly I flit about the continent in the steel bird of prey.
I recall the gray city of Cleveland, my sometimes home. Looking up at any given moment, I can see the torn flesh of the ocean of air that I breathe into my lungs. It is ripped apart by the turbine and the turboprop. Everything is so changed by the devices of men.
I recall even further back, flying into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at night, a desert nation made rich with barrels of crude oil mined from ages long past, life long past. You couldn't tell where the ocean stopped and the land began. The dunes were barren and desolate far below, land at peace. Not so here.
Is it the technology that is changing our Earth? Yes. But what about the people? The human intellect comes up with all of this jazzy stuff, but the population is what drives it into the virgin mother's back. Sex shouldn't be so appealing. Or, maybe, kids should not lead to tax breaks. There are six billion of us infesting this planet, and yet we reproduce at an astronomical rate. In times past, people died. In the present day, we do not. Medicine prolongs the inevitable by tens of years, children who would have ordinarily perished at birth are brought into the world with the power of science. I myself would have ceased to exist if I had been born perhaps four decades earlier. The medical profession is a noble and good one -- it is the rare individual the covets life's end -- but I am confused. Why do people continue to breed like only twenty percent of their offspring will survive when in fact nearly all do?
My thoughts are interrupted as I'm told to put my chair up into its most uncomfortable position. We are third in line to land. The sky is filled to capacity this night with airliners, angrily buzzing about like confused killer bees.
The desolation of the back roads, the loneliness of car and driver chained to the planet by gravity, this is more pure than that of the sky.
The heavens are no longer in the domain of angels. The heavens are a highway. Earth, our mother and keeper, partner, friend, even daughter -- love her...or leave her.
Peace.
Andrew W. 11/27/99
E-mail me at: astrogeek@dork.com
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