my time as an astronaut >> by robert delamar >> *spark-online issue eleven

“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.”

Plato

Opening Space

One thing I've learned from my time as an astronaut: space is far more interesting than travel.

Perhaps this is a funny observation from someone who spends his time as a space traveler. You'd think the age old debate about whether it's “the journey” rather than the destination would be resolved in favour of the former by someone like myself that has lived in numerous places over the course of a lifetime, but I'm strongly on the side of those whom while traveling, can't wait for the trip to be over. Call it impatience. I think I'm just interested in what I'll find when I get to the place that is the intended objective of the trip. I was always the kid more interested in the treat at the bottom of the cereal box than the cereal itself.

Perhaps some context would be in order before I start searching through the Corn Flakes.

I normally live and study in Vancouver, Canada but thanks to the generosity of a dear cousin, I'm now living south of San Francisco in California's fabled Silicon Valley. Like all travel or time spent away from home, daily routines and taken for granted securities are rudely taken from a person when they leave the familiar for the different or the exotic.

In the midst of this once again, my past travels have come sharply into focus. Thus, a few observations from my various missions into different spaces.

Personal Space

When I lived in Tokyo, Japan, the most compelling aspect of my time there was the lack of personal space. For example, having a toilet jammed up against the side of the bathtub meant for some interesting tangles while exiting the shower in the mornings.

One of the most interesting features of Japanese life was that the lack of personal space meant that activities normally conducted in private in North America became part of public space in Japan. It's all about compacts in Japan. Not the cars, the kind women carry in their purses (I can't even imagine the possibility of a Lincoln Navigator on the streets of Shibuya, but I'm digressing).

Women in Japan love their compacts. On the train, in the shops, on the street, one will invariably notice a woman with a compact staring intently at pursed lips recently painted, or teased bangs perfectly parted. The question for astronauts recently thrust into this new world: What kind of vanity could prompt this sort of behaviour?

Reality is of course much less interesting than the hyperbole human beings usually reach for when confronted with things unfamiliar. For Japanese women, private spaces such as a private vanity mirror or a bedroom with an attached bathroom are luxuries available to only the very wealthy. The invariable 10 minute makeup check in the contorted rear-view mirror that is de rigueur for the average North American woman is unheard of in Japan. In Japan, cars like bathrooms are miniature. What is a woman to do? Well, there is always the trusty compact mirror. In short, the average Japanese woman exhibits traits similar to the average North American woman. She simply practices them in different spaces.

Office Space

In North America, the pinnacle of corporate success is an office with a view of water. In Japan perhaps only the President of a major corporation makes do with an office (and not a very spacious one at that). Everyone else inhabits massive offices with banks of desks that seemingly continue forever. The supervisor is allowed a private desk. Most others share.

Office workers in Japan smoke at their desks.

Here in Silicon Valley, the average technical worker has an 8-foot by 8-foot pseudo-office better known as “the cube.” Cubicle hell has become a rather apt moniker for these monstrosities. I'm rather fond of mine, however, in that it's the first place I've ever inhabited in an office that was actually my own.

My cube is sparse. I have upon my desk a Sony Discman, a telephone, a notebook computer and a framed picture of my wife. Thus, I have 64 square feet of space in which to park my miniaturized workstation upon which all of my “work” is completed.

In Silicon Valley, office workers leave their air-conditioned workspace and exit the building in order to smoke.

Cyber Space

In Vancouver there is small portion of our kitchen that contains my desk. Upon my desk there is another notebook computer. In that computer is the potential for me to communicate, to traverse massive amounts of space, without having to journey. Thus, cyberspace is my preferred medium for space travel.

From time to time I check in on various Webcams located in my favourite Tokyo places. I work to bridge relationships garnered from around the world through ASCII text. I check the prices on different airlines, in the off chance that time, funds and desire will synthesize into another voyage to a space other than home.

Presently, I'm working on a notebook computer in a cube in a foreign country away from my kitchen. It seems, frankly and maddeningly similar. Virtual travel. Virtual space. A dull sameness that transcends physical location.

Outer Space

Last fall, I was listening to a Canadian Broadcasting Company radio program on a wind-tortured morning on the way to school. The program's guest was an astronomer, speaking about light pollution and its effect upon the ability of local astronomers to observe the stars.

Imagine not being able to see the stars. I remember the same incredulity when looking up at the night sky in Tokyo and seeing only the moon, and only faintly at that. I remember further, catching a glimpse of the sky while traveling in Thailand a few months later and being overwhelmed by the number of stars dancing across the panorama.

I stepped outside my office the other evening for a cigarette. I looked up at the sky and as the last pink clouds of a California sunset receded into the evening the stars began to sparkle triggering memories of times with stars, and times without them.

Inside an office, whether it is a room, a kitchen or a cube, there are no stars. No point of reference to the divine.

End Space

Looking through the Discovery Channel store in downtown San Francisco's Metreon movie complex last night, I was taken by a quote taken from Plato that now adorns the opening of this piece. I was looking at a photo reproduction of the Apollo 11 moon landing when I noticed the words: “Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another”. What sort of loneliness and wonder did Neil Armstrong feel as he stepped off the landing of his flimsy craft onto the ancient dust of the moon? Was he taken with the whole journey while he was traveling, or was he simply consumed with the goal of getting there?

Are these questions motivated by vanity? A desire to know more about life than that which is permitted to be understood? And who gives us the permission to understand? I'm wondering this aloud. Is it like women with compacts in compact spaces, whose actions in one environment can be interpreted so differently in another, though they are the same?

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit has a man from all his labour in which he toils under the sun. One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and it comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled hearing. That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

- Ecclesiastes 1:2-9

Robert Delamar wanted a telescope for Christmas once when he was a child. He received the Chronicles of Narnia instead. Both are windows into the world beyond. He still thinks he would have received better marks in Science classes if he got the telescope, but then he probably wouldn't be the Managing Editor of *spark-online if he had.