Cosmic

There are more stars than there are people. Billions, Alan had said, and millions of them might have planets just as good as ours. Ever since I can remember, I’ve felt too big. But now I felt small. Too small. Too small to count. Every star is massive, but there are so many of them. How could anyone care about one star when there were so many spare? And what if stars were small? What if all the stars were just pixels? And earth was less than a pixel? What does that make us? And what does that make me? Not even dust. I felt tiny. For the first time in my life I felt too small.

We walked on the moon. We made footprints somewhere no one else had ever made footprints, and unless someone comes and rubs them out, those footprints will be there forever because there’s no wind.

Gravity is not a trivial monster.

I'd completely forgotten about it. But I saw it now. Spelled out across the lunar surface, two words -- "Hello, Dad!" I was grinning all over my face. I whispered, "Hello," into the phone. I was assuming that she'd written it for me. Now I come to think about it, maybe she was saying hello to the other dad, the one who'd left. My dad looked across at me. He looked puzzled. Like he knew it had something to do with me. I said, "Hello, Dad." And he looked even more confused. When he hears this story maybe he'll think I got them to write it there for him. And maybe he'll be right. Maybe it was for both of us, and for other dads too. For all the dads on Earth. And for all the dads not on Earth. And for their dads, outwards in space and backwards in time, all the way to the Dad of the Universe. And looking out into the space, it sends a greeting from Earth to the Universe. Hello, Dad.

I looked at them all. 'You can't spend your life up here.'" "The moment I said it I remembered Alan saying tat in a way he HAD spent his life up here, That his memories of the Moon were so bright and vivid that the things he did on Earth seemed grey by comparison. And I thought how completely cosmic it would be if I could fix that for them. If I could make it so that part of them was always up here. So that when they were back on Earth and their dads were yelling and pushing them on, they could just tune out and come back up here, where -- in their brightest memories -- they would always be kids.

What I remember is being on the moon. I remember every second. Every stone. Every star we saw. Sometimes it feels like I never really came back." - spoken by character Alan Bean

I'm talking about how to stay in one piece. Try to get hold of the things that are important, the good and true things about your life. Up there is some kind of lovely. And maybe you need to have something in your heart, you know, something even more lovely. To help you find your way home. Otherwise maybe you could be beguiled." (Spoken by character Alan Bean)