It is not only my imagination: the winds on Jupiter really are like your breath on a gnat. And Saturn's rings get dust all over my shoes. And the moon guides the butterflies while it shepherds the sea.
I am on a planet they call earth, looking up, 90 degrees into the air. I have the distinct feeling the air does not belong to me. The air is black, thin; it looks like it isn't there. It isn't there. I see three planets. On the horizon is Venus, and in Orion's fist is Saturn. Mars watches from the middle of the sky. There are many stars. Many tiny dots. White dots in black air that isn't there. And I think to myself, "Really though, Mars is red. Saturn too. Venus is big and gold. And they are there. Not just as dots in my air, but there. Venus is bigger than my planet; it's a huge chunk of rock enveloped by clouds. It's very big. Bigger than the dot. It is bright. Bright because it reflects the sun. The sun is shining on Venus right now. Right now. And the light I see, looking through the air, the air that isn't mine, is the sun's light. It has traveled very far. The distance is inconsequential. It's too big to matter. Too far to make any sense in my head, which breaks road trips into sixty mile increments."
Saturn doesn't move. It is faster than any rocket ever made. It spins faster than any top a child has spun. Saturn is in the air, a white dot, and it was there in January, in Hawaii, clenched above Orion's head. It will be there a while longer and then it will not be there. It moves -- like my planet moves. They move together, to different places, but both move at once. They hurtle around another bright dot, the source of all light in my eyes. I see three planets, but no; I see three mirrors, one light, in my eyes tonight. They do not belong to me, but to their light. They orbit the light, as I do, and they are not mine.
They are not white dots, as White Out on black paper, but are like airplanes in the sky, which only look small because I'm not looking at them up close. If I were looking up close they would be big, bigger than me, bigger like this planet. I would see only the land six feet in front of my left foot and two miles out to sea. But now I see the whole thing, because they are farther away than I can understand. How far? You can't understand because you think "big" is the earth, which is only twenty-five thousand miles from here to the other side to here. Venus is far away like Greenland is from a crocodile. Saturn is far away like a penguin from the West Nile. Mars is far away like home is from Siberia.
When you really think about it... but then, maybe don't. It might make you stop breathing. It might make you hug the next stranger who asks you to take their picture. Because Venus is far away like you are from Joseph and Mary. And right now, basking in the light the sun glares on Mars right now, the light that is not warming me right now, these three planets are closer to me than you are. And that scares me. But I'm not afraid, because there is no man on the moon. There is only the moon, a ball of gray dust, and it's really eighty long walks around the earth away, and the dust would filter through my fingers and fall, because the moon is really there. When you really think about it, it makes you put your hands in your pockets and say, "Ah." It's day on Saturn and I wish you were here, to hold my dusty hands, and wonder and be...
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