Signals From Space
Sept 12 2014


I live at the end of the road
on the verge of a forest
where I could easily lose myself
a few minutes in
to its dark wet interior,
perhaps the first man to see
its unmapped vastness.

Hammered to the wall of my house
is a small device
that picks up signals from space,
a lifeline
from the glimmering lights
of the big metropolis
somewhere south.

I have never seen
the bristling satellite
that keeps me in touch.
Stationed
in low earth orbit,
where it's high enough to see
the cold blackness
of interstellar space,
the blinding sun
burst from behind the planet,
this luminous blue-and-green sphere
that must seem even more rare, and fragile
from the airless void.

But it does not look, of course,
too busy transmitting game shows
to outposts like this.

Or perhaps I have had a glimpse.
Looking up, on a cloudless night
from boreal darkness
at a star-filled sky,
a tiny point of light
near the southern horizon
I could easily mistake
for a distant sun.
One, among billions and billions.

Its reassuring stream
of electromagnetic waves
is thin as spider-silk.
My connection
to the rest of the world
as easily cut.

I recently signed up for a satellite dish. Instead of 3 stations over the air on rabbit-ears, I am suddenly in touch with a busy noisy colourful world that goes for 24 hours non-stop. TV can be brilliant; but there is no escaping the vacuity, the breathless self-importance, and the shameless consumerism of most of the medium, as we hypnotically distract ourselves to death.

That small dish, and its tenuous stream of electromagnetic waves, can seem incongruous, even ironic, sharpening the difference between the profane and profound. There is the contrast between the real physical environment here, and the world the dish exposes. There is the feeling of invincible power our technology gives us, when in fact our civilization could quickly disintegrate, as every civilization before us has -- as easily as that thin tenuous signal, instantly snuffed out. There is this super-sophisticated high-tech precision machinery, all dedicated to transmitting mostly junk. There is a brilliant star in a breath-taking night sky, which is really just a small orbiting box, almost close enough to touch. I think of the almost transcendent experience of astronauts, describing their privileged sojourn in low earth orbit -- watching the sun rise from behind the planet; on a space-walk looking out at total blackness, with nothing between them and deep interstellar space; looking down from on-high at a borderless planet, and feeling filled by its beauty and fragility -- and how the opportunity is wasted on this dumb metallic box.

So a lot of thoughts spring to mind when I glance at this small dish, hammered on to the southern wall of my house. But I can't give it up. Seinfeld re-runs to my heart's content? Really, how could anyone?!!