The Ink Is Black (Blogophilia 20.7)

The ink is black

The page is white

Together we learn

To read and write…

This is the song that stuck in my head after reading this weeks assignment.  But I really couldn't fit Three Dog Night into a coherent post, so...

So you ask me what my ink is? It is my companion and my friend. The one thing I can count on in times of trouble and strife. It shares my secrets and I can choose if they get revealed... or not.  My characters can be part of me I wish to mock. To make fun of my bad habits and disjointed thought process.  And the evil traits of others, sometimes. 

I can be other people.  I can do evil and good.

This week is the anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.  If you have been reading me for a while, you know when I was 10, my family  lived in Orlando. This was during the height of the program. Everything in Central Florida was space themed.  Even "I Dream of Jeannie" was set there.   It was a heady time for a day dreaming 10 year old.  I kept Estes Hobby Products in business with my purchases of Models and engines.  My brother and I would shoot them off every weekend at the Junior High School track at the end of my street.  We got in trouble a couple of times when the wind would take the rockets over the Navy base. 

I would stay glued to the TV, watching  the men with the Right Stuff prepare for battle,dreaming that maybe it could be me taking the long elevator ride to the top of a 20 story aluminum tube strapped with explosives. Why, I'd be a hero! I'd sit in my cramped little seat with the ceiling of gauges 6 inches away, waiting for my date with destiny. 

Then it would all start.

My head turns into a pancake as the thrust of a couple of H-Bombs blew out the tail of the tube.   The sucking feeling of zero gravity as the craft slipped the bonds of gravity, my body pushing against the restraints.  The hours of waiting as the craft competes its trajectory across open space, hitting the target some 250,000 miles away. I would enter into the landing module not knowing whether it would land softly. I certainly wouldn't want to get stuck.  

Disembarking on the bleak Sea of Tranquility, sky the color of my mother's velvet Christmas dress, I could imagine me saying something a little more lively than "This is one small step".  Maybe "Yahoo!!! I made it", or something.  And I'd look on the rising Earth, as the only color all the day long against that oil black canvas of the vacuous sky.  I'd wonder if their was sound there. With no air or other medium to carry it, would anyone hear my shouts?  Would anyone care?

I always admired the guy who snuck the golf club on board, driving the ball however far it went.  If it were all just work, why would you volunteer?

Just because it is there, I guess.

Apollo 11 ended up be the last launch I saw. We moved back to Atlanta the next week and I ended up seeing the landing in motel room. Not nearly as much fun as being on the front yard and looking east to where the dot faded into the heavens.  

Seems so far away...


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Topic-Heather Blomquist

Pic-Barbara K.

Pic guesses:  
Astronomy lesson
Planetary Conjuction
System
Third rock
Lined up.