Frontiers

I wonder where we’re going. If you would have asked my parents this question when they were young, they would have had an easy answer. “To the moon.”

There’s never so good a direction as up. Up always seems like progress. The appeal of the new and unknown was attractive to everyone, I suppose, but I suspect there was also a secret desire to be able to escape everything we knew, even if it was only vicariously through a few men. The astronauts’ escape seemed to be an adventure to me when I was young. As I get older, escapes have become more of a search for catharsis than a thrill. Space used to be an appeal to me because it was at the rim of our understanding. But, now I just want to go because it’s quiet in space. I need a vacation, I suppose.

Right now, we don’t get the benefit of an easy answer. Where are we going? Forward. Is forward left or right? I’m not sure. How will we know when we get there? I don’t know. I’d like to think one can develop a thick skin towards ambiguity, but the lack of answers to these questions still strikes pangs of fear in even the strongest of us. I’m an evening guest walking down a dark hallway. If I’m lucky, my fingertips can skim the wall as I walk to guide my way. Most nights I’m not lucky. It feels like floating. But these problems are not new. Maybe this is how stumbling through time feels.

My parents had the moon. Before that, there was the west. And before that, America. Do we have any frontiers left? Frontiers exist for one reason: promise. Where do we go now to find promise? What direction? We are a people hungry for something to believe in. It seems that so much has fallen apart so quickly. So much of what we thought to be true is on its last legs. Yes, this can be exciting. But, it is also harrowing. I’m weary.

I don’t think we need to shoot up another leaky rocketship. But, where do we go to find promise? Where is a light we can start walking towards? We’ll project promise on to anything that feels like it will not break. Politicians, deities, products or punditry, no matter. Promise us something unbreakable and we’ll give you our hearts.

For the past three years, things have been breaking faster than we can fix them. Infrastructures (real and imagined) have toppled. There’s rebuilding to do, but we’ve no moon. We have building to do, but no blueprints and no general direction to work towards. There is no up, and the edges keep moving further out as we build in every direction. This is exciting. This is confusing. This is building a spaceship as you fly it.

I went outside tonight to try to see the moon. Coat, keys, and hat, I stepped out. The moon wasn’t there. Just light pollution. Just gray. Most nights I’m not lucky. All I could see were the light trails of sirens heading north. The ambulances always head north in this part of town. Up, I guess.