The Stay-At-Home Astronaut Manual

What would happen if the universe burped? Maybe it has burped. Maybe it burps all the time. Maybe there wasn’t a big bang. Maybe there was a big burp. This is known as the burp theory. Theories are burps of intellect. They occur after eating hypotheses. Hypotheses are delicious. They taste like chicken. Everything I’ve experienced in life has either been a complete surprise (most of it has been a complete surprise) or a disappointment. There have been a lot of disappointments. The ratio of appointments to disappointments is pretty thin. I don’t want to sound non-committal, but when I close my eyes I drift away into the magic night. This is how I discovered England. It came to me packaged as chocolates. No wall is impenetrable, but some people want to make you believe that they’re bulletproof. I don’t know why they insist so much on this. Today’s literature would rather fool around with the faculty than learn the ukulele. I feel present. That’s what’s important. Being there. It’s crucial. You’ve got to get up and ask someone to dance eventually. Otherwise what’s the point? You’ve got to invent a narrative for yourself. Me, I’m still working on it. It’s too late to become an astronaut. At least in the orthodox sense, with a helmet, a paycheck and a degree in aeronautics. I’m more the stay-at-home kind. I’m already in space. What else are you going to call this space around me? I call it a room. It’s got a view. But not it’s not in the window. It’s in my head. Which has windows called eyes. Which I require for space travel. Inertia works well as well. I like to lie in the bed watching the stars behind my eyes. Think of it. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second. How does that make you feel? It makes me feel transparent as the wings of the dragonfly. It makes me feel ephemeral. Blissfully ephemeral. And sad. There was no meaning in the end. No apparent meaning. There were the meanings we created. But did that confer them with any reality? Meaning requires testimony. Meaning requires a steady framework. A context. A norm. A dispersal. Meaning is pollen. Poets are bees. They be bees. You can feel it in their sting. Where does that come from? There’s an ocean in every human being and no one can reach the bottom. The basis of the universe may not be energy or matter but dog collars. If you don’t believe me, try whistling. See what comes. Remember Walter Huston laughing his head off at the end of Treasure of the Sierra Madre when all that gold dust blows away in the wind? I think Kierkegaard would’ve like that. You’ve got to learn to trust your brothers and sisters in space. Not their bank accounts. Space travel promotes camaraderie. It’s cold in space. The baseline temperature of outer space, as set by the background radiation from the Big Burp, is -454.81 degrees Fahrenheit. Bring a sweater.