I'm not saying I know

It's all feeling unclear.

Intemperie

Bad Weather:

In watery nets

the convent of childhood

was reborn to me.

Where are you,

white stair?

I descended you

among the locust trees

and the earth

had no trenches.

Now on distant paths

a companion staggers,

carrying a dead man.

On his face

his eyelids fall

like lifeless violets.

Where are you

white stair?

A scream

slips from me:

the ground is gone.

Flames of perfumed smoke

along the way

no longer give shelter

in this rain.

Antonia Pozzi (translated by Amy Newman).

Wally, Walt, and Whatshisname

In other news, Apollo 7 launched on this date in '68.  To mark the event, here's some color commentary from Schirra's book:

I was not pleased with pad discipline, and I suggested to Buzz Hello that North American hire Guenter Wendt from McDonnell, who had been a superb pad leader. We badly needed him. Hello was a competent manager, but he lacked Healey's ability to judge people, and on that occasion he misread me completely. 

"Sure, Wally," he said. "I'll get you a rubber piggy doll if you want." 

"Wrong, Buzz," I answered, and if there was a steel edge to my tone, it was intended. "We made some big waves out in California, and you'd better believe we'll make them here too. We want the best people available, and we won't hesitate to name them. Wendt is the best. He did all of the Mercury and Gemini launches. He will not take any nonsense from your employees on the pad. If there is any trouble out there, he can he trusted to let us know." Guenter Wendt returned as pad leader. We then began an exhaustive series of tests on the pad.
...

It was a telling moment on each of my flights when the gantry was pulled away, and the crew was left alone in its spacecraft atop the booster. This is the moment when we lost real touch with earthlings, who became voices by radio only. It's as of this moment that the white room, in which Guenter Wendt and his crew had labored diligently, just disappeared. It was then on the morning of October 11, 1968, that Donn Eisele¹ made a remark I'll never forget: "I wonder where Guenter went."

Speaking of Guenter, here's der Fuhrer of der Launch Pad in his own words.  Anyway, keep those cards and letters coming, folks...

1 - Good ole Whatshisname.

She dreams in color, she dreams in red

Can't find a better man.

Oddly enough, I'd already picked out this song last night as a kinda funny (to me, at any rate) follow-up to Them Crooked Vultures.  Pearl Jam was Ericka's favorite band, and this song in particular she loved to belt out in the car or whilst puttering around the house.  Perhaps it was synchronicity, so I dedicate it to you, my llama.

Redux

Death:

it is prohibited to whisper the names of the dead,

as it encourages them to linger at the doorstep,

and she has already lingered, far too long

Crisosto Apache.

it's a fragile thing, this life we lead

Last night Ericka's brother called to let us know that she had been found deceased in Portland after a concerned property manager requested a wellness check.

While the kids and I have been on our own for going on six years, her presence always lingered as we wondered where she was, our grief incomplete.  Now we grieve all over again, though with the closure of finality at last.

My heart is utterly broken, even though there was never any realistic possibility of reconciliation or redemption or whatever.  At least she is finally at peace.

Say you've got me confused

I ain't a better man.

Unconcerned

The Lion:

Since kindergarten

my son's class has practiced

for when a lion

enters the building.

They have a safe wall

they crouch against.

A closet some of the children

fit into.

The lion roams

wild in the hall.

Races up the stairs.

When the lion

is at the door

they are taught

to think of emptiness.

Darkness.

A real lion not

some yellow-furred animal.

Megan Snyder-Camp.

#throwbackthursday

Damn, I really miss that chair (2015).

Sorrow more distant than a star

The hopes burst and shot joy all through the mind.

The Galaxy Is...

New Stars Develop in Orion:

What can the wave do
That the wind cannot,
A bird, a cloud, any moving thing?
How can the wind manipulate
The trees, the light?? That genius,
That graciousness is what I claim.
That head of hair survives
For twenty years. The spirit
Thrives on its own will to live.
The daylight, energetic, dazzling,
Deepens in my eyes. Now, as before,
I pity that bird whose wings
Are motionless. The sight and insight
Darken in the dream. I barely breathe
Above the breaking of the waves.

Gerard Malanga.

A million lights are dancing

And there you are, a shooting star.

schemes of evidence offered in contradiction

Salt Plumes:

As intimate as doubt

all that is personal in chance

distinguishes one to one from

the one from the other

reinterpreted in the dark

and shared only with number

the objects in the room

the articles on the desk

are an assent to a consequent perfection

that is abandoned in moving on

pursuing neither a conclusion nor

a new point of entry

what had become unacceptable

is now overburdened only partially remembered

timed to the word denied with nothing

else to take its place or make its order

sustained by mechanism and the simulation

of some capable version or familiar resource

a preemptive predecessor quietly virtual provides

something other than an option

Ray DiPalma.

"Let's get on with it."

Happy Birthday, Project Astronaut!

On Oct. 1, 1958, NASA, the newly established agency to lead America’s civilian space program, officially began operations, with T. Keith Glennan and Hugh L. Dryden as administrator and deputy administrator, respectively. One of the new agency’s top priorities involved the development of a spacecraft capable of sending a human into space and returning him safely to Earth. On Oct. 7, Glennan approved the project, and the next day informally established the Space Task Group (STG) to implement it.

Gotta love management: 

In approving the project, Keith Glennan's comment had been, "All right. Let's get on with it." Bob Gilruth remembers that at the time he "had no staff and only [oral] .orders to return to Langley Field." When Gilruth politely pressed the administrator for some details about how he was to implement the plan in terms of staffing, funding, and facilities, Glennan reiterated brusquely, "Just get on with it."

The Rule of Names¹:

Contrary to the feeling expressed in some quarters, even among experimental test pilots, that the ballistic capsule pilot would be little more than "spam in a can," most members of STG believed from the beginning that their pilots would have to do some piloting. As George Low explained their views to Administrator Glennan, "These criteria were established because of the strong feeling that the success of the mission may well depend upon the actions of the pilot; either in his performance of primary functions or backup functions. A qualified jet test pilot appeared to be best suited for this task." Exactly how much "piloting," in the traditional sense, man could do in orbit was precisely the point in issue. 

The least technical task facing NASA and its Space Task Group in the fall of 1958 was choosing a name or short title for the manned satellite project. Customarily project names for aircraft and missiles were an administrative convenience best chosen early so as to guarantee general usage by contractors, press,  and public. 

Langley had earlier suggested to Headquarters three possible emblems or seals for the use of NASA as a whole: one would have had Phaeton pulling Apollo across the sky; another would have used the Great Seal of the United States encompassed by three orbital tracks; and a third proposed a map of the globe circled by three orbits. These proposals, as well as the name suggested by Space Task Group for the manned satellite project, lost out to symbols considered more appropriate in Washington. "Project Astronaut," preferred at first might lead to overemphasis on the personality of the man. 

Silverstein advocated a systemic name with allegorical overtones and neutral underpinnings: The Olympian messenger Mercury, denatured by chemistry, advertising, an automobile, and Christianity, was the most familiar of the gods in the Greek pantheon to Americans. Mercury, alias Hermes, the son of Zeus and grandson of Atlas, with his winged sandals and helmet and caduceus, was too rich in symbolic associations to be denied. The esteemed Theodore von Kármán had chosen to speak of Mercury, as had Lucian of Samosata, in terms of the "reentry" problem and the safe return of man to Earth. 

Had a mythologist been consulted, perhaps the additional associations of Mercury with masterful thievery, the patronage of traders, and the divinity of commerce would have proven too humorous. But "Mercury," Glennan and Dryden agreed on November 26, 1958, was the name most appropriate for the manned satellite enterprise. 

Greeks might worry about whether Mercury would function in his capacity as divine herald or as usher to the dead, but Americans, like the Romans, could be trusted not to worry. On Wright Brothers' Day, December 17, 1958, 55 years after the famous flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Glennan announced publicly in Washington that the manned satellite program would be called "Project Mercury."

And mankind would never be the same again, blah, blah, blah.

1 - Still on my Earthsea kick.