Thankful for the moon
I mean, holy shit.
Dear Treaters,
If you know me well, you know I love the moon. I love space stuff. Space books (Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff), space movies (the 1989 documentary For All Mankind), space music (Brian Eno, Apollo: Atmospheres & soundtracks), even space costumes (with a fellow Space Cowboy a few Halloweens ago, above).
When you’re a space gal, the Moon comes up a lot. It’s the most visible, obvious space “thing” around and let’s face it, the Moon is cool as hell. It’s got the sexy desolation of the desert with the goth coolness of an entirely black and white landscape. It’s always in sight but, aside from a few moments in human history, always out of reach.
Today is Thanksgiving, and this morning I thought about the moon. When you spend time with Space Stuff like the Moon you start to come across a lot of thinking and writing about gratitude. That’s because when folks leave the Earth, they suddenly realize how much they took it for granted while they were there. And although only 12 people have ever walked on the moon, just watching them seems to inspire that same sense of gratitude in we Earthbound types.
Astronaut Jim Lovell (he was played by Tom Hanks in APOLLO 13) said this about NASA’s moon missions:
We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you’ve ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself—all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy living here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.[i]
—Jim Lovell, Apollo astronaut
I can’t say it any better than that. Incidentally, you may recall that Lovell orbited the moon many times but never had the opportunity to set foot on it. He seems pretty OK with it. We’re lucky to be here.
And I’m so lucky to know all of you. I can’t even tell you how much I love my Continuous Small Treats subscribers; they are the most good-looking, witty, sexy, well-dressed, smartest, and coolest people on Earth. And, I daresay, on the Moon.
Love, love, and love - and thanks,
Buzzy xo
[i] We learned a lot about the Moon: Jim Lovell, in In the Shadow of the Moon, documentary film, directed by David Sington, Vertigo Films, 2007.