There are iconic photographs well known to most of us, and this image, taken by Michael Collins, is especially significant. It shows the lunar module Eagle, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on board and the Earth in the background. What is so unusual about this photograph is that Michael Collins is the only inhabitant of planet Earth, dead or alive or still to be born, that does not appear in it.
RTWT at: Only one member of the human race missing from this 1969 photograph
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He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
Gerard Van der Leun
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Putting myself in Michael Collins’ shoes, I have never felt so lonely. We really do need each other.
What happened to Mondo Bizarro?
Miss old website format 🙁
I don’t visit much anymore and when I do, rarely leave a comment. My life is busy in other ways these days, but you still stay on my mind.
I love the new header and format, Gerard. It’s gorgeous and fresh.
Best to you and much love.
Ummm, what about everybody on the back half of earth?
What a lonely thought. I wonder if Michael Collins realized that at the time.
Huh, no stars visible. That’s weird, since stars can be seen
even with a full moon.
Must be the full earth, or the fstop?
Seems quite a stretch to appear poetic.
The force of will to maintain his own sanity is remarkable. America still produces men of this caliber,they just are not venerated as they once were.
I was one of the tiny, insignificant cogs in the machine which accomplished this wonder; I’ll always be proud of that.
I’ll always miss the country which could bring about such achievements. Maybe it will live again; I hope so.