Fly Me to the Moon

I don’t know about you, but I’m about at the near end of my rope. My fellow humans, no need to name names, abhorrent behavior as of late, has been making me feel a bit out of sorts.  I’d say I want to pull my hair out, except, at this age, my hair is falling out quite naturally on its own which is a whole other problem altogether.

Let’s start small with my personal dealings with men. No need to throw all men under the bus. Just the ones I seem to meet.  More often than not, on the very first date, the first thing I hear is that their ex is crazy, I take that as a red flag to run as fast as I can. However, before dashing, I’ve been known to retort back, “I hate when men say that. Have you looked at yourself lately?” I’ve learned enough at this point to spot a projection a mile away. If they are pointing their finger at their ex-wife as crazy, four other fingers are pointing back at them.

Speaking of wanting to pull out what’s ever left of my now thinning hair, what the heck is happening to my dearly beloved celebrities and their thinning bodies. It appears I am seeing the never too thin or too rich theme play out in extreme measures in real time. People please, I beg you, stop with the Ozempic. I’m all for being healthy and fit, however, I’m actually starting to miss seeing some heft.  I’m realizing, I liked my celebrities with a little bit of meat on their bones and looking like the more human side of real. Now they are starting to look like stick figures drawn by kindergartners. As vain as I am, I feel the necessity to draw the line, no pun intended, at stick figure. People are getting so skinny they are now calling it Ozempic face. The irony couldn’t be more blatant. Get too skinny, then put filler in your face to puff it back out. Enough already. Just eat healthy, go for a walk, and if you are so mind-blowingly wealthy, do something good in the world. Take a hint from Mackenzie Scott.

Now that I got that out of the way, I’d like to take a moment to get to the winners who have kept me going with hope for humanity. The moments and humans that have brought me pure, unbounded joy despite these past few miserable years filled with war, human suffering, climate change disasters, and just plain insanity playing out on the world stage. I’m talking about the incredible feats recently by extraordinary humans who have pushed the boundaries in sports and science.

Alysa Liu, anyone? That knee twirl, head spin and hair flip…and ending it all with saying she won’t let anyone tell her what to eat, how to dress, or how to skate anymore! I just wanted to spin around my house for days after watching that four-minute dance of exhilarating freedom and her display and achievement of Olympian proportions that she threw out into the universe.

Oh, and speaking of the universe, how about those four courageous astronauts hugging endlessly, laughing while orbiting where no human has gone before, showing us photos that are still blowing my mind with the perspective of our planet brilliantly referred to as a “lifeboat” by astronaut Christina Koch, spinning in a galaxy of infinite space. I’m still trying to wrap my head around those images of galactic glory set against four diverse humans gleefully floating around in a tiny capsule made possible by the NASA geniuses back on earth. And to make it all the more human and hilarious was the floating jar of Nutella. Which, by the way, is so unhealthy and fattening I found myself wishing some of the too thin celebrities would please eat a jar just to balance things out and make their human bodies right again.

As I watched the space exploration expedition from down here amongst Earth’s madness, I found myself singing, “Fly Me to the Moon."

However, as much as I’d like to think it would be great to take a break from this planet for a while, some extraordinary human comes along and creates some breathtaking piece of art or transcendent piece of music, or some multi-colored bird perches on my windowsill or some, how is that even possible sunset, stops me in my tracks and I’m awe struck by the beauty in this life.

And so, with whatever gift of time remains, I’ll try not to pull my hair out by the dark side of humanity acting like lunatics, now that I’ve got the gift of being inspired by seeing the dark side of the moon.