Speaker For The Diodes - Desire

10:40 pm - Desire

the-nita linked to yesterday's Astronomy Picture of the Day. As soon as I read the description, I knew exactly which photo it was.

Ouch.

You see, I'm an acrophile. Have been for a while -- likely longer than I've known the word. And a bit of a space buff. And in 1984 I could still afford subscriptions to Science News and Astronomy -- I don't remember which of those I first saw that photo in, but I do remember the moment I turned the page and saw it (printed as a full-page bleed, IIRC).

My heart stopped. A lump formed in my throat. And I discovered for the first time that envy could be experienced as physical pain. Oh, I'd wanted to be an astronaut before, but never as strongly as after seeing that photo. Even now, when I see or hear the name McCandless, my mind is filled with this image.

Even without the acrophilia and the envy, it's a beautiful photo on multiple levels. And it has lots and lots of room for each viewer to project her or his own issues into. For me, the photo seems to whisper several things at once ...

... but while it's whispering all those other meanings, it's shouting into my brain, "Want. To. Be. There. Dammit. Exclamation. Point." My throat tightens up and I hear my own voice whining, "No fair -- I wanna be there -- when's my turn?"

Bruce McCandless, un-fucking-tethered, a hundred meters from the Space Shuttle that hauled him into orbit. First untethered space walk. (The APoD page mentions that Robert Stewart also got to do that the same day, but McCandless' name is the one I always remember because he's the one in the photo.) No mechanical connection to the spacecraft, nor to the planet; no tether, no ladder, no mountain, just ... floating ... in ... space ... with a maneuvering jet, and gravity and Newton's laws of motion. Not standing on anything, not even being held up by aerodynamics: alone outside the atmosphere. Spacecraft within reach using the maneuvering pack, but no physical contact. I'm not sure why the distinction between being inside a spacecraft that's in freefall and being outside in just a spacesuit in freefall feels so important, but it matters to me, at least as I imagine both situations. Probably because even though each is a sealed, pressurized container, one registers as "clothes" and the other as "vehicle". Oh, I'd dearly love to get into orbit -- or farther -- in a spacecraft, and even that would be a dream come true. But to go EVA, to see no walls around me, nor anything that could count as a floor, whichever way I look, to gaze down upon the Earth or out toward the stars, no ground under my feet, no railing, no window, just empty space between me and anything else; that would be one hell of a trip.

I know that for some people these ideas evoke terror or even moderate discomfort rather than desire. I do not know whether or not there is anyone for whom this image evokes indifference. I understand my own reaction, of course, and I understand the folks who'd find it scary. I have trouble imagining anyone not being moved enough to notice one way or the other.

---

A couple years after that photo came out, I was in a car with co-workers, hearing on the radio that that shuttle disintegrated just after launch. When someone asked, "If you were offered a ride on the next one, would you go?", that photo of McCandless was firmly in my mind's eye as I blurted, "Oh yeah, I'd still go -- I'd be scared, but I'd sure as hell go." Many times over the years that image has leapt to mind. And every single time, it's accompanied by strong pangs of "I. Want. To. Be. There."

I don't know which is worse, imagining and desiring that experience, or having experiened it and being back on Earth again. But you know, I'd love a chance to find out firsthand.

I know that's never going to happen. I'll have to settle for movies and photos and stories and my own imagination, like almost everybody else. And try to scratch that itch by looking down from tall buildings, mountains, trees, and aeroplanes from time to time.

And still, every time I see that photo on a page or on a screen, every time anything reminds me of it and it pops into my head, I'll be thinking, "If only ..."