August Winding Down

I lay on top of the sheets in my underwear. It was 3 PM on this summer day near the end of August. The day was hot and so the window beside my bed was open. In my house there is only me, and so I get to decide when to turn on the a/c, and therefore often – okay, always – the a/c is not turned on until the house is much too hot. But I like having the windows open. I like feeling the breeze coming through, I like smelling fresh air, I like hearing the sounds outside; I feel connected to the world. When I turn on the a/c, and I close the windows, then I feel like I’m shut away inside a box. With the windows closed and the a/c on, I’m more comfortable physically but less comfortable mentally. So I keep the a/c off and the windows open for as long as I can stand the heat.

Through the open window I hear a strange noise in the distance, kind of a loud crack. It was not the sound of an automobile colliding with another automobile. I once lived in a 3rd floor apartment beside a bad intersection where there were a lot of accidents. While I lived there I heard cars hitting cars, cars hitting pickup trucks, cars hitting motorcycles. This noise that came through my bedroom window was something else, but it had that flavor of something smacking something. It was not a good sound.

Then I heard another sound. This new sound was so weak that it could have been my imagination. The sound was so weakened by distance that when it reached me it must have been just a few molecules of air jiggling my eardrum. But it sounded like a distant human voice saying, “call 911.” I imagined the rest of the sentence: “Do you want me to call 911?”

I rolled to a seated position on the edge of the bed and put my glasses on. I trudged to the front room and looked out. Traffic had stopped on Westover Avenue and automobile passengers were leaning out their windows and looking down the street ahead of them. I trudged back to my bedroom and pulled on shorts and a tee-shirt. I put on socks and shoes. Time to investigate.

By the time I left my house there was already a cop at the corner directing traffic away from the accident. I walked to the corner and looked up Westover; another police car was at the next intersection, its blue emergency beacons flashing away. I walked down the street to the accident. Police were talking to a young black woman. She had been driving a red scooter. It appeared she drove through a stop sign and into the side of a car. The front of her scooter was smashed, but she looked perfectly okay.

I continued on my way until I circumnavigated the block. On the way I stopped to talk to a woman sitting on her front porch. Of course I knew both her and her husband who, she said, was inside lying on the bed. After ten minutes I felt like I was perspiring sufficiently to embarrass myself with growing wet spots on my clothes, so I continued on to my house. Once inside my house I got out of my sweat-soaked clothes as quickly as I could and hung them up to dry. I wasted no time turning on the a/c. Screw the smell of fresh air. It was time to burn some kilowatts.

ISS

Warm night air. Bare feet on concrete sidewalk. I scan the western sky expectantly. At first, nothing. Then I see the International Space Station sailing slowly out of the west, a point of light rising above the willow oak across the street – a bright star, not the brightest but brighter than most – moving slowly and steadily across the sky toward the northeast. Moving, but not going lower, not going toward the horizon, but rather going into the northeast sky, fading, dimming. I glance away as a mini-van turns the corner and passes. One headlight is out. It’s Elisabeth. (Last night she moved from her rented house into a nearby apartment. Why has she returned to her former abode?) Look back at the northeastern sky; the moving star has vanished.

This is the third time I’ve seen the space station. I recall the first time I saw it: a shuttle was chasing it across the sky then, ferrying passengers to, or from, the station. On that night there were two bright, moving points of light that instantly winked out as shuttle and station flew into Earth’s shadow.

There’s nothing remarkable about seeing the space station fly overhead. And yet it is something that has never occurred in the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history. A species on Earth has learned how to climb above the atmosphere and circle Earth in the vacuum of space every 90 minutes.

Baby steps. How long from Columbus’s voyage to the beginning of a new country? To be around in a hundred or so years: that should be an interesting time.