Extrasolar

I met a scientist. He stood in line at Wal-Mart yesterday, both arms balancing an overstuffed hand basket filled with Twinkies, Sara Lee pound cake, two Hungry Man dinners - Salisbury Steak and Chicken Cacciatore, a gallon of store-brand whole milk, a clear plastic box filled with butterless croissants. I looked at my own push basket. A dozen free-range eggs, six lemons, two bunches of cilantro, five pounds of whole wheat flour, a box of pressed soy, broccoli, a carton of organic lowfat milk.

"Heh. You must be one of those vegetarians."

He leered at my basket, as if it sprouted canteloupe breasts. He held his goods close, but his girth prevented his nose from inhaling the imprinted cardboard housing his treats.

"I just try to eat low on the food chain. I have kids. I have to teach them how to eat."

The woman in front of me turned around, stared at my sparse goods, then moved her purse, her torso, so I couldn't measure her motherhood. Her toddler shifted in the grocery cart seat, tried to lurch and grab a candy bar. She screamed when her mom slapped her wrist, her yellow-ribboned ponytail cracking like thunder. I tried not to wince at my self-righteous words. I wished I kept quiet, just laughed at the man with the heart attack horn of plenty instead of handing him a shopping list of the ways I think I'm better.

"What the hell is a person like you doing here?"

The man laughed as he spoke. His groceries rose and fell with the shake of his belly. I knew what he meant, knew the Wal-Mart stocked tofu for the short list of people like me, people who came to this cattle-fed quadrant of New Mexico to escape the smog and traffic of Calfornia.

"I like it here. I sell Avon. I'm a mom. I'm single. Where else should I live?"

He laughed. He liked my answer, and his cheeks echoed red like a school girl, as if somehow I told him those secret dirty thoughts I only dared uncork late at night when my boys slept under heavy blankets.

"I teach astronomy at the university. I wasn't planning on shopping, but I can't stop thinking about what's out there. I mean Out There. You know? Some of my colleages think there may be as many as sixty-five Earth-like planets for every basic star we've found. If this ratio holds, we're talking sixty-seven billion habitable planets in our galaxy. One galaxy. One galaxy in a sea of countless."

I imagined it as his groceries jiggled. A tide of intelligence, as if every calorie in his basket was a planet, he was a sun, he was his own galaxy, a black hole at the center, a black hole munching Twinkies, gulping statistics, swallowing us whole, us whole.

"Huh. Sixty-seven billion?" I did a quick calculation. "At current population levels, that's about fifteen planets each for every man, woman and child living today."

The cashier started to ring my goods, my bunches of wilted cilantro carelessly shoved into a cheap plastic bag, my tofu, my hormone-free milk.

"Yeah," he answered. "Talk about vacation potential."

We laughed. I paid. I carried three bags and the knowledge we might be alone in the ways we understand life, but for all our smarts and commerce we're still insignificant. Just a few hours later I sat in a school room with four middle-school students. They rested guitars on their lap, just like me, and we played one chord after another in a rhythm that echoed a song they loved, a song riddled with illicit words, a song by a band called Limp Bizkit.

"Hey, Ms. Jaworski!"

The tall eighth-grader with the kewpie doll hair and misleading angelic expression paused, three stiff fingers pressed into the neck of his instrument.

"Are you going to get in trouble for teaching us this song? Our other music teacher makes us play baby songs, even though the stuff we like is just as easy."

I tried not to smile. I knew Mrs. Baca, the woman with the short frizzy hair who wore sensible brown sweaters over khaki slacks, who taught them old school rock like the Beatles and The Doors. Kewpie Boy didn't know she passed them sure teen-aged terror, a cocktail of indecency and lust, songs that made her own teacher cringe decades ago. She didn't care what songs I brought to class.

The songs don't really change, I thought. It's all promise of sex, rage against authority. I wore safety pins along the bottom of my ripped shirts at his age. I shaved my hair into a mohawk, let my parents hate what I had become. I worshiped The Clash, The Sex Pistols. This is nothing new.

"Well, Henry, I'm going to tell you something I learned today."

He leaned close, as if my booming voice was meant just for him, not the entire room.

"There might be sixty-seven billion habitable planets in our galaxy alone. That's fifteen planets for every man, woman and child. I bet that any intelligent life on those planets has their own music, and I bet their teenagers think their music is the coolest and the best. It's nature, Henry. As you pass out of childhood you need to shake off all that uncertainty with music, with words you think might give you power. We all do it. Mrs. Baca did it, too, and those songs she teachers you are just as wild. Listen beyond the melody, listen to those words."

Henry shook his head. He kept his fingers clamped into a C chord, and I could see the edges of his finger pads grow red from the pressure.

"Nah. I don't believe that shit."

He paused, waited to see if I would reprimand him, if I would react. I didn't move.

"No such thing as aliens. Even here in New Mexico. Heh."

The boy in the back rustled. He held his guitar on lap, too, but spent class pretending to play. He wore a mud-splattered black baseball cap over unruly black hair, black dirty shirt over frayed jeans - a loner, heavy with limbs that hated excise, heavy with some kind of invisible pain. He sat afraid, still, not yet knowing his hands could caress music from a hunk of wood and six strings.

"Henry, haven't you read Bradbury? Martian Chronicles?"

The boy kept his head down. I had to strain to hear him.

"Henry, we are the aliens."

I nodded, yeah, strummed the first line of our song, and as we slowly pounded through verse, through chorus, five students stomping feet, trying desperately to look detached, cool, my heart knew that lonely boy was right.

Comments

[Stever]

SEE... I WAS RIGHT!

Those are some lucky students!

[Carroll]

An 8th grader with a "misleading angelic expression"...you're gonna make a big impact on those kids, Birdie.

[Meg]

I don't know if I believe in the notion of alien, because I don't really believe in "normal" or "native"... everything is odd and displaced.

I've never felt so natural in a space that I owned it, nor so unnatural that I figured I couldn't belong.

[Rick]

I love this. How many seconds before a stranger tells you : “Some of my colleagues think there may be as many as sixty-five Earth-like planets for every basic star we've found.”?

You are a “well-fed” oracle, Birdie. What alien tribe’s tradition includes the story teller that you tell your story to? A story teller that passes it on, lute in hand. I love it.

[Scott Lyons]

Sing, Birdie, sing.

Hey, let me know when you write a book.

[melody]

In reference to Scott's comment, I'll be standing in the "meet the author" line for your autograph.

I just found you and love your writing.

[Jonah]

OMG! This is just so, so good. Well worth waiting for. I love the Woodstock widget art at the top (how I date myself)!

[CLG]

That was beautiful, Birdie. Those are some lucky, lucky boys, learning guitar and life from you.

[Birdie]

Ok, I shall spill the beans a tiny bit. Yes. I wrote a book. What happens with it is anyone's guess, but maybe, fingers crossed, some publisher will want it. That is all I will say for now.

Now! About guitar class... I taught yesterday and have another story. Those kids teach me way more than I teach them. I'm just passing out chord charts, showing them how to hold the beast, how to count beats. They teach me the important stuff. Such an unfair trade.

[Wandering Willow]

Hooray for misfits who quietly speak their truth into the void! I'm sure the other boy soaked it in, even if he didn't respond.

Lucky you, lucky them, to have those times together. I would have been tempted to hug that scientist guy!

[Lloyd]

some how I could hear the raspy voice of 'Bones' McCoy in that..

"in all this and perhaps more... only one of each of us....."

[julian]

I don't think you can call them 'aliens' any longer ..just 'undocumented space voyager guests.'
much love to you as always... :o)