An Ode to the Unknown
I
I don’t think the first ones did it elated. One wandered out into the night. His loved ones left to wonder at the venture. He, a communion with the gods for there was talk of one who had returned. Of another night not long after his leaving: cold, exhausted, the howling of dogs trailing him, starving perhaps himself when he touched the other side and the night overtook him… Others still in the ancient region of Mexico looking up those blood-washed stone steps. The gore, the elation after how many thousands gazing up with utter certainty in his eyes, hot with madness, a hold upon the priest’s shoulder whispering in his ear “…I will meet the gods…” in his ancient and all but forgotten tongue. The words dripping with his ecstasy. The heart pounding against the cage of ribs for view of the sun. Certainty entreats madness too.
II
We do not believe in gods now, but there are gods nonetheless. We have only killed the real ones. No Zeus or Athena or Yahweh, nor heaven but there is still truth and courage and there is money and utopia, and still, as there has always been, there is the unknown — the greatest of the gods. What will we not do for that most powerful and omniscient of them. Who will not be crippled or persuaded into faith at its prodding?
We fire rockets into the sky our brave comrades strapped into their bucket seats, all calamity rattling with the immensity of the journey into that cold dark black. And if the rocket should break up in its ascent and a dozen lives lost? What of it. More are willing. Though a masterful god to many, fear is not such a great god to some.
III
I remember my father telling me once when he was a boy his father walked him out into the yard one night. It was the cool of April and my grandfather pointed up to the night sky and there was one star among them that moved hastily against that great vault. The satellite that kept Yuri Gagarin. Back then it was the first and only manned satellite to traverse the rim to that great deep. The rest was stillness, the moon untouched, Mars a pure fantasy world. Below that awful expanse my father looked up with the rest of the planet and what wonder was finally crushed and what new wonder born?
IV
The vault of the night sky is like Borges’ desert labyrinth. A fitting depiction we’ve inherited for our imprisonment on Earth — vaulted by the sky like a man abandoned in the desert. The immense arid waste a labyrinth that we must decipher against the riddle of our biology. Our keeper that incredible void of empty cold vacuum. Our need to touch the stars, to glimpse the unknown goading us on. Our chains what we have not yet discovered about ourselves. Who would say humanity would not collapse in upon itself if we did not reach out for it? The gods know when we have not put them in their needful place. They know, as do we, that without courage faith is just believing. The great unknown holds everything. If only it were certain what to be certain of.
