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Weightless Christopher Rye When I was five years old and had not yet learned how to swim, my father bought a television. So we gathered round, as some families do, and once he had banged the set to make the images dart and ripple, the first thing I saw was footage of the moon landing. Now, like any five-year old boy confronted with two grown men leaping about on the planet of love, I felt I'd tossed that two-shilling piece up there for them to dance on. But I wasn't interested in Neil Armstrong - he was too busy telling the world about Small Steps and how, what with the earth being so far away and all, they were really... Giant Leaps. I didn't even care about Michael Collins, up there all alone like a lost little star waiting for his companions to come back from their dirty weekend in the dust. And as for Uri Gagarin, he was just a Cosmonaut - the world's first victim of brand loyalty. No, the man who intrigued me was Armstrong's Number Two, his Right Hand Man, who was content to leave something like: "Er, Houston? It sure looks good from here" as his bequest to history. Why? Well, like any American tourist, he just wanted to take a few pictures and leave his footprints in the sand outside some shiny, airless capsule. But there was no local colour - only the blue Earth rising and the Stars and Stripes in his companion's grasp. So he waved the flag a little to try and generate some atmosphere. And Neil Armstrong says: This is your captain speaking. Stand by for information. But as Armstrong's Right-Hand Man limbered up for his giant leap into the footnote of history, a caption flashed onto our television screen. It said: "This... is a recording". And, perhaps because the reception was poor, or because our new set was really just a primitive beast - like the dinosaurs my sister said lived on the far side of the moon - there was a loud buzzing noise as the caption blazed there on the screen. Sitting in my mother's lap, I turned and asked: "What was that?" just as my hero started to bound about, testing the limits of his gravity. I realise now she must have answered: "Oh, that's just caption buzz", although how she knew about these things at the time is a mystery. But what I heard was: "Oh, that's just Captain Buzz. It's nothing to worry about, dear." So, from that day onwards I believed Buzz Aldrin was named for his supernatural ability to make my television buzz with pleasure from a distance of 240,000 miles. And Neil Armstrong says: This is your captain speaking. We are going down. We are all going down, together. Adopt the crash position: put your head between my knees and stand by. And Buzz Aldrin says: Oh , my, look at the stars. Up there, where there was nothing. Not even air. And that, dear reader, was the
start of my long obsession with travelling, the moon and the sea. Because to
walk on Earth is to never leave the surface, but to walk on the Sea of
Tranquillity is to step off the physical world and swim (a leap for which all
astronauts receive weightlessness training in a huge swimming pool - The
Swimming Room). People claim that some astronauts lost their minds. But not Captain Buzz. The truth is he is still haunted by his memories of weightlessness. You could say that the moment he stepped off the surface and swam into history, he became, quite literally, the ghost of his former self. So I like to think that you can see me, very small and waving back, in that famous photograph of the earth rising above the moon's horizon. But it was many years later that I finally realised the truth behind Captain Buzz setting foot up there with his NASA box-brownie and his lead-weighted boots. He was only there to make Neil Armstrong look good. Up there, where there was nothing.
Not even air.
Copyright © Christopher Rye 2000 |