Snippet: Full Moon
I am never tired of the sight. The pilot looks bored, and he's made less flights than I have. His experience all in space station docking. I get it, that's trickier. This assignment is a cake walk. He's young, but as he switches control to my display, I can't help but feel he is already thinking of retirement. He leans back and closes his eyes. I am left alone with the moon. The glass and plastic cities scattered across its surface sparkle as we come around, avoiding a face full of sunlight. The moon is full tonight. At least on Earth. But that's not half so beautiful as seeing the valleys and peaks of the satellite lit with the gentle lavender glow of dusk. Of seeing the sliver of its dawn edge growing under our approach, expanding to meet us. Maybe the pilot would retire here, on one of the lunar resorts for ages fifty and up. But no, he's fast tracked to retire young. On Earth, playing golf under normal gravity until his joints are too wracked with arthritis. Then maybe a transfer to the gentler moon, where the greens are carpeted with cultured algae and the palms look fluffier, like something out of a Doctor Seuss illustration. I don't want to live on the moon. Don't want its mystery to be commonplace. I want to view its phases from the ocean shores of Earth, and visit it as a stranger, always. Author's note: These snippets are unedited free-writing exercises that I use as a way to shift my brain into a creative state. I use Lynda Barry's What It Is YouTube timed exercises (usually 9 minutes worth of writing) for these. They are handwritten in a composition notebook, and then typed up here. As I transcribe them, I do tiny grammar and spelling checks, but the overall "clarity" (if you can call it that) of the exercise is left as-is.