Borderline

Whatever Comes Next

“Will an asteroid strike the Earth!?”
reads the inflammatory headline,
the apparent date of impact
listed as next week.
I scan the column for confirmation.
I have lunch plans that day,
and an asteroid
would really foul things up.

Can you imagine the conversation?
Either we’d exchange frantic conspiracy theories
about the asteroid being a myth
put out by bottled water companies,
so people will stock up
on disaster supplies,
or we’d weep,
polish off a bottle of red wine, maybe two.
Eventually, we’d be so drunkenly removed,
we’d make inappropriate jokes
about who we thought the asteroid
should hit first-
And convince one another
to go to the homes of past lovers who wronged us,
egging or toilet papering their front yards,
saying that by the time the police
caught up with us,
it would be the day after
the last day, our last day.

Maybe we’d cancel our date altogether
and shovel into the Earth,
attempt to build a burrow of
beams and dirt walls,
hoping this might squirrel us away from admitting
that escape wasn’t likely-
But I’d still want to try,
because even though our stability
depends on the conformed structure
that exists in the Universe,
and we are but parasites to our host Earth-
I’d hate to have it end
with a cataclysmic loss to the way things are.

I investigate the article.
It turns out, it’s good news!
The asteroid “should” shoot past the Earth
without trouble, no big deal,
There is “only” a one in forty thousand chance
that it will strike here.

If I had to gamble
on being given ten million dollars
verses instant obliteration,
and the odds were 1 in 40,000 either way,
that’s a bet I wouldn’t take-
But this isn’t a bet.
At any given moment catastrophe could strike.
As comfortable as I feel toting around
my optimistic nature,
scribbling positive affirmations
into the corners of my notebooks,
and looking at the glass as full
with more to come,
I know what happened to the dinosaurs,
who didn’t imagine that we’d one day
“be,”
or dig up their bones,
as if by seeing bones
we know what they were about.

In 1971, Dr. Edgar Dean Mitchell
became the sixth person
to ever walk on the moon.
While standing there, viewing the stars
more bright than is visible on Earth,
he felt the a powerful surge of
connection and knew
that he was made with the same materials as stars,
that part of him stemmed back
to the original creation of all life.
He experienced Samadhi,
a feeling that he was as much a part of the beginning,
as to everything of which there is no end.
He started the Institute of Noetic Sciences,
wanting to bring science and
that which doesn’t need science,
together.

If we are one with everything,
then this includes asteroids.
The edges of rock are our own sandpapery elbows.
The ocean is but the wetness of our mouths.

There’s nothing to fear,
there’s nothing to fear.
Not asteroids,
or dinosaurs,
or whatever comes next.