for Daniel Paul Schreber
First of all, a word about love. Love is a beautiful thing, and when people say that, they mean my love, because my love is a beautiful thing, a truly beautiful thing. This is how the word love is used. Love is important. Love makes the world go round, that is to say, my love. You know how it is when other people say that they love you, or they care about you or they need you and it’s not someone you want to be loved, cared or needed by. When these other people use the word love, it’s weird, awkward and embarrassing. Not like my love, which should be respected.
All this is necessary to frame the following very simple and thoughtful remarks: so you’re with Javier, or whatever his name is. Fine. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whatever secrets you share or his getting to look into your fine blue eyes and listen to the quiet music of your voice. It doesn’t matter because: I’ve walked a mile on the moon, baby.
The moon is a totally different place than you can ever imagine. For one thing, there’s no air. This, in itself, should totally blow your mind if you think about it.
I walked a mile on the moon. I played golf on the moon. I just stood there, on the moon, on the bright surface that is like unmixed concrete powder. I had a hand job on the moon. It wasn’t a homosexual act. We were on the moon, looking at the earth, no ordinary definitions applied. Ask the other astronauts. They all did it. It was the first thing we thought of when we realized: Holy Shit, We’re on the F’in Moon! We were gods looking down on all humanity. We had climbed the highest mountain of all mankind. We just looked at each other and did it. There was no kissing. Ok, there was a little kissing, and afterwards it was a little awkward and we found that both of us couldn’t really stand to be in the LEM at the same time. But still.
But still, it was better that way, because you could just stand there and look at -the Earth and say to yourself: I am the only one, the only one. All those people are dead. The earth is a dead, dead planet. I am in my suit. In my suit I am my own planet. My suit is supplied and supported by the breath of the billions and billions of dead whose souls I consume in my planet suit.
We could have gone to the sun.
This may sound like rambling to you, particularly to students of psychology, but I say to you: you have never been to the moon. You have no idea what it is like.
Afterwards, we wrote things, secret things, in the lunar soil with our feet, in the lunar soil which turned about us like ash. Things no one else will ever know, since we were the last.
In the end we hurled out of plastic bags of feces onto the moon, our feces which were small and light since we did not really need to eat on the moon, which freeze dried. That’s my feces on the moon.
So now, if I don’t go out, so what? I’ve looked up and seen the Earth. I’ve lived away from it. I’ve walked a mile on the moon and my dreams are clear, clear water.
That’s why we’re going back to the Moon. See, I’m tired of this place and you. I’ve seen all the faces, the countless gestures that comprise human life. People have whispered their secrets to me and I find them all so trivial. The darkest heart is just a filthy recipe to me. I belong among the stars, to sing them to sleep, to pop them like bubbles.
63rd TURN: YOU LOOK, BUT NO ONE YOU KNOW IS THERE
WEEK: 50; WORDS: 56,380
NEXT BY 7 JUNE 2006
