Ice and Pluto

Posted on November 10, 2005 in Attitudes Reflections

I woke up as if I was rising from the bottom of a lake and had to push a ceiling of ice in order to breathe the air of wakefulness. I saw myself as naked, hairless with strong arms. When I managed to open my eyes and listen to the sounds of the world with my ears, I heard Lynn thunking about as she finished her morning blogging and prepared to wrestle the computer at her workplace using only her bare scripts.

* * * * *

Life is falling from Pluto to the surface of the earth, a journey of many years. We dodge planets and their moons. Now and then an asteroid nicks us, a passing comet sends a chill, or a meteor runs us through. We can treat this fatalistically or we can wonder at the cosmos around us. The smash comes. We can do nothing to stop it but everything to be realistic about where we are in the fall. We have not died yet.

* * * * *

Speaking of Pluto: A few years ago there was a controversy about whether Pluto was a true planet or a member of those vagrant orbiteers at the edge of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. For a time, astronomical societies declared it a Kuiper Belt Object. Thousands of children wrote in begging to have it restored as a planet, so astronomers capitulated.

The discoverer of Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, was still alive. Someone asked him what he thought of the controversy. Tombaugh smiled and said “The way I see it is that either I discovered the last planet or the first Kuiper Belt Object.”

There’s merit in Tombaugh’s attitude worth retrieving and using when it becomes necessary to salve the slashes of oppressive thoughts.