Letter on Space & the Body

Our destinations are numerous if we believe
airport light boards or Sunday preachers.

Ifwe consider cyberspace & also other galaxies
as sites of meaning-making or reachable termini.

"We are in constant free-fall around the earth,"
says the astronaut at the International Space Station

in an interview before she heads out on the first
all-female space walk to replace a battery unit

that failed to activate. Unlike certain metals,
our limbs often bend to our will & reassemble

themselves. In the first light we are always
worn out & often leaving. Body with machinic

consistency, a systematic reshuftling of parts.
The disappearance of the body into loneliness.

I would like to tell you about the tactile universe.
What we are sure of is minimal: the mystery

of the unseen inside of things-the gliding
flexing, bone-breaking grooves of peripatetic

movement or a longing for stronger feelings.
I would like to be inhabited perthaps not gently

but with some kind of energy; think Rem Koolhaas
on reinforced concrete: "infinitely malleable at first,

then suddenly hard as a rock" His photo is gritty
&I delete it almost immediately. Each material

has its own kind of aliveness. Twisted white sheet
across his thigh & what else? I need to say: the him

can be anyone. "What do you say instead of
"manned space flight?" asks the radio reporter.

"Human space flight," the female astronaut says-
"crewed." Alone, my hands glance this remote

capsule & I slide open to the night, my body
a radiant city, a desert of transparence, a line

of escape, an unraveling net, an ever-growing vault
of uncertainty. The quiet storm of the burning bush.

A message that needs transmitting urgently.
What does it mean to be almighty with joy

of discovery? We can't sense space without light.
"The sun never knew how wonderful it was,"

Louis Kahn once said, "until it shone on the wall
of a building"