Story's Journal
New journal entries will appear from time to time.
Interview 2002
What should we do with space? Exploration! It will mean nothing unless we do exploration.
Exploration is reaching far enough out there that space can become a mirror for who? For humanity
and who you are! So you find out what kind of universe you’ve got, what your place is
in it.
Journal 1998
We are explorers forever moving outwards, or we die inwards.
Journal - 21 October 1996
Gantry – a pause in the flow to reflect on what is going on and why, what is the purpose
of this. A high crow’s nest point of view, vantage point like space. Gantry structure
is symbolic of the complexity of the enterprise, the spacecraft, rockets and the tank, face
to face with the massive forces, the power of a launch, it brings the danger of it all face
to face. Your possible destinies are forced upon you. There is no denying the possibilities.
The ocean, at one time in your roots, the oceans were an infinity, they were the space of that
time – the biggest distances, the deepest depths, the deepest mystery, the furthest horizon.
Face to face with maybe the real reason that we do all this – the quest to find meaning
through exploration of this and other universes.
College Paper 1990
I have and do keep a journal and use it at all times. I am noted for doing this because I am
seen taking endless notes in circumstances and situations in which there couldn’t possibly
be any useful information…. I may be in class or in a NASA meeting or at the theatre or
the museum and after taking in the information or object in the traditional sense – giving
it a chance to speak to me directly in its own context and in its own agenda – I then
ask it a seemingly ridiculous set of questions such as ‘How does this enhance my experience
of space flight or how does this contribute to the meaning of space flight to humanity?'
College Paper 1990
Human space flight is a unique and magnificent way to perceive and interact with nature. It
is fresh because it is the first opportunity for humans to see their reality from this vantage
point; there is the fresh experience which has not yet been apprehended by science, language
and the arts.
College Paper 1990
There is an immense pressure and temptation to ‘conquer’ space, to appropriate it
into our earth-based paradigm and celebrate that ‘victory’ among many such other
‘victories’ over nature. If that is the course which is succumbed to, we will never
know the difference and never know what, or that anything, was missed. With humanity’s
technological, even evolutionary move into space, a much wider view of nature, earth and universe
becomes possible, but it demands an open consciousness which is not fixed in earth-based assumptions,
and eyes which are not limited to earth-based vision.....While a true perception and experience
of space flight requires a new consciousness and vision, it simultaneously provides a unique
environment which may be used to facilitate enriched states of mind. Floating in the dark, drifting
off to sleep, without knowing where one is over the earth, or where the earth is, or even the
position of the enclosing spacecraft about you, without touching any object, without any orienting
anchor, is a magical, magnificent condition in which to achieve the totally serene silent mind.
In a physiological sense, the body relates only to itself, it is not standing in a line, not
sitting at a desk, not lying on a beach of sand, it is just there, it just is. If our actions
in the free-fall, zero-gravity of space are forced to be earth-like (because not to be earth-like
is a threat to stability), we will never grasp the reality of space flight. We need to be conscious
of ourselves as creatures of space as well as of the earth if we are to be natural and comfortable
doing things in zero-gravity, in a way fitting to zero-gravity, not to ambulation [walking]
on earth.
College Journal 1990
In reference to sustainable behaviors, I strongly agree that conceptualization and communication
are the instruments for change... Knowledge which is intellectual does not change human behavior,
knowledge which is felt changes human behavior… Lecturing to people in abstract terms
has not and will not change behavior... A global sense of community at the ‘emergent’
level which looks at earth and its relationship to earth through unbiased eyes will go a long
way to correct the tragedy of the commons toward which we now run.
