Perseverance

With the landing of Perseverance on Mars today, and the next part of her journey just beginning, I am reminded that I have my own journey to continue. In my struggles with life change, I had been thinking about not continuing. But as she rolls out, I had best do the same and do a system's check and get on with it; there is not time to waste!

Her last phase aboard the Mars2020 ship has ended. A voyage of millions of miles and unthinkable extremes and extraordinary complexity was not the true mission, although much was learned along the way. Nor was her mission the fiery launch from Earth last summer and all of its dangers, although great effort went into it. Her journey and mine briefly crossed paths in Southern California nearly four years ago as I got to visit work being done for her voyage. While I affected her future very little, that time for me was monumental. It was a turning point, a chance to support my better half in the way they have always done for me. I also returned to the ocean for a bit on that trip, reconnecting for a brief time with the journeys my own past. And a new phase of my own life was underway yet again...

My own journey has had many phases: some dangerous, some extreme, some loving and gentle. All of them have taught me something, and led me to the next stretch. Led me... sometimes kicking and screaming but still going to the next phase.

Perseverance's nail-biting landing - carefully planned - still held the possibility of the unthinkable and the unknown. She and her caretakers could only do their best and trust in all they had labored towards. The terror of re-entry knows no equal!

Life is like that for me, even as my oxygen saturation and heart rate move in the direction of improvement. Was there too much damage on top of previous damage? Will my eyes return to focus, my hands stop shaking, and the brain fog clear? What of my other scars and disabilities? Will they continue to degrade? Is this time of slight improvement of recent declines a brief curtain call to be followed by my final surprise?

Like Perseverance and her caretakers, all I can do is continue and hope it all holds. For her today, for the landing... she held, and the efforts of thousands held. Through fire she held...

Through my own fires I have held, always knowing that someday, I will not hold. I do everything I can to not make that day, this day. Hold on, hold strong, hold fast!

Her next stretch is to explore a world sparsely inhabited by robots, to see if maybe some of the future or maybe even some of the past might be able to be there, or once was. No matter what, knowledge will be added to the pool accumulated by generations of people doing their best to understand the world and universe around us.

My next stretch is to see if I can translate my mind and my experiences into the written word. At times I feel like maybe I would rather risk unprotected planetary re-entry and wander a nearly empty world than touch a darn keyboard again.

The sunsets she will see! And the rocky vistas... the ground will get rough, and parts of her will break and fail. She will have to make careful decisions because she will be alone, and will have to attempt to repair herself if she runs into trouble. She will have her caretakers helping from afar, but in the end, the lonely grind will be hers. She faces storms and canyons, loss of connection and struggles undiscovered.

The sunsets I have seen, and the rocky vistas... the stormy seas and green forests. The ground has been rough, and pain common. The decks have moaned and creaked, the horse have spooked, and the many hammers I have swung impacted me even more than the surfaces they struck. I tried to make good decisions, but often failed from need, arrogance, fate, or human frailty. As I have broken - and fallen apart - I have had to find new ways to continue my mission, to find new purpose in the wreckage of the old. Even with the unparalleled help of my own caretakers, in the end... in the middle of the night when things are sometimes their most broken, I am alone in my own mind.

My own mind... what a strange place! Over time it has become its own wasteland, but one carved and created not by wind and wave, but built by and full of all that I have ever done and been. To voyage deliberately back into all of that morass of identity is either an act of loving courage - or a deeply foolish attempt - to do something worthwhile with what time I have left. I have been to that abyss too many times, and in the end... I have to keep making repairs long enough to keep going until I am done. I have to find a future for myself and for my loved ones in that mess...

Perseverance has big shoes to fill. Scattered around her new home - her final home, and lets not mince words about that - are those who came before her. Giants big and small from a pale blue dot came before her, all assembled by savage creatures with minds too large to ever be comfortable and hearts too big to be anything else than what they are, creatures endlessly searching for themselves and finding that what they are is both great and terrible. These creatures, her caretakers, have assembled her and her sisters and brothers. They have given her purpose anc the tools to fulfill her great promise. Her kind carry on what her creators are, with both virtues and flaws magnified. She shares one basic truth with all things: she is not forever. What she must do, she must do before it gets dark and her energy runs low. Before she wears out, before her memories fade...

And she will do it because she is of the pale blue dot, and those of that world are fiercely stubborn with ponderous ability. She is of a capable kind, born of a capable people.

The shoes I have chosen... represented in thousands of volumes adorning the walls of my cabin, those shoes will never fit me and I would never have such ambition. I too ride on the shoulders of giants, both those that have written, taught, and created, and those who have invented the means by which I work, communicate, and live. I am one of those savages that dream, and my mind is vast - as is my heart. The wasteland grows faster than I can translate it, the flaws are many and the virtues too few. My caretakers are beautiful and competent, and if I can do this thing in front of me to do, then they will be glad. They asked me to, they encourage me, I want them to be proud of me and so I will keep trying. I will try to transcribe who I am, and what I think before the vision grows dim, and too much breaks, before my energy runs out and the light fades...

And I will do it, because I am fierce, because I am too stupid to not get back up when life strikes me down to the mat and tells me to stay there. I have a mission and as I am one of those creature from the pale blue dot, I have it in me to do what I put my being into. I come from a stubborn people, a people of ponderous ability.

She will explore a new world world of hope and excitement...

I will try to make sense of an old and ailing one.

She is the beginning of the future...

I am the end of the past.

Exploring, learning, sharing. We will meet again, in our own way and in our own time.

We met once, on the shores of the great western waters. And then went our separate ways, each to our destinies and journeys. I will look at that bright red dot in the sky and think of her and her family up there, and what she learns will be sent back to this pale blue dot to help my family here.

Roll on Perseverance, and I will muddle on. And we will both do our best on the next part of our journeys.

-- J.R.H.