TIME (Schulte)

There was a time when nothing existed. Then everything began, and everything was new. I danced. I was seen. I celebrated. I breathed with purpose. I felt at peace. I was whole. There was a time when being was all that mattered. There was a time when I ate the best orange ever. The juice ran down my chin and fingers, a sticky stain that kept spreading. I was a kid then. I crashed a scooter into the back of a truck, and the scab turned into a scar. Even then, I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

The time came when I grew up. I turned my back, I stayed behind, no one was left. I wanted to return. I couldn’t do it. I lost myself. Turned my back. There was a time when I thought the world was over. There will be a time when it is. Then, everything will be new. There will be a time when it all starts again. There was a time when I was lost in the dark. A time when everything held its breath, when something spectacular happened, when everything came alive. In time, I saw the shimmer. Follow the light.

PREPARATION (Rott)

Waking before alarms, my dreams already in orbit. Memorizing procedures into familiar prayers. Running simulations, fear dissolving into muscle memory. Counting backwards. Run, jump, squat, stand, ingest, sustain BMI and caloric intake. 700, 500, 200, done. Remember to relish each meal. Clutch loved one’s hands. I laugh at sad things and cry for happy. My feelings unmuzzle too freely. Is gravity already loosening?

Focus. Compose. Submit to medical hands, numbers, scans—become the data, improve probability. Trust the machine, the math, the calluses of repetition. I am insulated. Warmed by a patchwork of rest assure faces. Accepting control is a story we rehearse. Becoming a question awaiting an answer.

Holding, waiting.Watching the sky. 

MIR (Schulte)

February, 1986. There’s a chill in the air, the kind that always persists throughout the harsh, Soviet winters. But nothing can freeze the excitement of everyone gathered. It buzzes in the breeze, thrumming with the rush of innovation and discovery. Today is the day; today is the launch of the Proton-K rocket carrying Mir, the first space station.

2001. The end. Finally, Mir returns–to a new country, a new Russia. Children are designed to outlast their parents. It’s the natural cycle of life. Even so. Leaving home, being sent away from your birth place, only to return years later as a stranger in a foreign land. How does anyone face that kind of loneliness? How is anyone supposed to face that kind of loneliness?

Maybe Mir knew better. Maybe it had practice with loneliness after years of drifting through endless space. Alone, in the cold and dark. Solitude. The only station. Existence that stretches so long it forgets there was ever even a before. Until suddenly, something. Another. Mundanity and routine shatters alongside one of Mir’s modules. Now, nothing is clear. Direction and navigation are lost, chipped off into the cosmos. Even the most detailed of plans crumble in the face of coincidence. Wherever, whenever, the power of pure chance will always come into play. The vastness of space, powerful and all-consuming as it is, cannot prevent collision (contact, connection). No one is ever truly alone.

ORBITING (Rott)

The novelty of falling loses its inertia over time. We long to resume terrestrial attractions. To lay on surfaces, slump on shoulders, and succumb to the simple pleasures of gravity. I am beginning to doubt my memory of things. The weight of an orange, the smoothness, the waxiness of peeled rind. The stickiness of juice. Dried. On my mouth. On my fingers. The sound of squeaky faucets and running water. And dripping water. The magic of small things.

Restless, I watch the blue planet like a lover turning in sleep. Admiring its motions of peaceful slumber. Oceans pretend to be still while watching white clouds dance. Weather seems more mood than science. Continents creep 1,000 miles a minute. Night arrives instantly with an infinity of stars. They pulse, competing for recognition, longing to be named. I map Earth's constellations, connecting lines to city flickers. Small beacons of home speaking in morse code.

Below, it continues: faucets, voices, smiles, laughs, faces and names, everything… Am I above the world or inside its dreaming? Each orbit winds us closer and further away. Threaded between everything and forever.

 SPACE (Schulte)

There was a space that we moved in, and it existed in our presence. There was a space that breathed alongside us. In and out. All around. Everything came alive. There was a space that was mine. I understood it, and that knowledge created wonder. There was a space I belonged in. Here, in the space, we find truth.

Even with all the stars in the sky, there is still space for emptiness. Stillness. The quiet of void. When stars die, they explode. The space erupts into light and heat and life until there’s nothing left of what was before. Still, there is quiet. There is space. It is not out there, it is in here. There is time. Here.