moons and starstuff
and interconnected bodies
Imagine / you / such a beautiful moon hanging silver sometimes waning or waxing pulling on oceans and haunting the shadows yet cold and alone in a void of black / stillness / bathed in radiation and dust Or perhaps a small planet Planetoid? Like a novella of rock and dust and starstuff and still isolated spinning / orbiting / drifting Do you know that there are others just beyond reach reflected light no more than a wink Here we are, dancing quietly / soundlessly catching distant starlight with our backs our faces limbs tucked to spin us faster around ourselves and all the while we are within grasp of a multitude
I think sometimes that we get this isolated feeling, this perspective that we are utterly alone in a world full of other people who are also utterly alone, and to some extent that’s true. We create the isolation, we inherit it from the billboards and AI slop ads and alexa devices and oh-my-god-are-we-still-falling-victim-to-social-media, and our ingrown filters fail us, and we double down on us-against-the-world and I-guess-I’ll-just-do-it-myself and nobody-is-coming-to-rescue-you.
Stop for a sec. Inhale, feel your body expand, feel your beating heart. Decide when you are ready to let that CO2 back out into the world, and remember that your air feeds the plants around you, and those plants use your spent CO2 and sunlight and spin up the Calvin cycle and chug out oxygen, and I breathe that oxygen, and—dammit—none of us are really alone out here.
This came up in a casual conversation, as do many of the things that prompt me to write. A friend casually mentioned that they felt a bit like a celestial body, spinning, lonely, out in the void of space, and their words really struck something deep inside of me, like being seen or acknowledged. I’ve been spinning on my own. But have I?
Am I really as alone as I think?
Well clearly not. Here’s you reading my words right now. Here’s you, a part of a community of people who might be reading this exact sentence at exactly the same moment. And even if you’re experiencing it differently, even if you put a different emphasis on one word or another, here you both are. Here you all are.
Here we are.
Please don’t forget that you cannot help but be interconnected. It’s out of your control. I’m so sorry if you need control over this and I’m telling you that you cannot have it, and I can relate. It drives me a little nuts, too.
But here we are.
Here we are.
The machines that tell us to buy things or to sell things or to subscribe to things or to repost things or to read things or to absorb things or to consume things don’t want you feeling this inherent connection you share with me and with the multitudes of me’s sharing our CO2 and oxygen with you. They don’t want you feeling less alone. They thrive on our isolation. They thrive on our hunger.
And here we are, giving them the finger. Hell yeah.
Your trans friend,
Robin



A very interesting essay Robin. If we take time to think about it, we are all connected in one way or another.
wonderful -- so with you on connection x