Spaced out!

I've always wanted to travel to outerspace. One of the fun questions I torture myself with is: If you could get onto a spaceship right now, leaving behind your family, your life as you've known it, never to come back, would you go? I have a few questions like this I keep for rainy days. It's like mental hara-kiri. Stimulating.

I have a particular fondness for black holes. Even did a paper on them for English class in college. That was all theory and speculation. But now, now, I know the reality of it.

There is a mall out here in Bangkok, called Platinum, well known for its floor upon floor of clothing available at reasonable rates. I went there today.

Walking in that place is like being sucked into a black hole. You lose all sense of space and time. Directions don't exist- up, down, left, right... they just don't make sense anymore. Gravity, however, does exist. It helpfully concentrates all your body weight into your feet. This is closely related to another fact- that the boundary between the living and the dead is also erased. You see, after some time (who knows how long),  you find yourself with your hands on your hips, waddling and shuffling along like a pregnant zombie who doesn't care anymore.

What's frustrating about this particular black hole is that pretty soon, you realize it isn't just one, but a whole series of them just that suck you up and spit you out with no regard for human dignity. What baffles me even now, is how, in that void, in that infinity of space, I managed to turn up at the same bloody spot again and again and again!

After a while, I just gave up and became philosophical. I didn't know where I'd been, I didn't know where I was going, whether I would ever see my family again.... It's when I found that I was giving myself inane advice that somehow linked the clothes I was eyeing to being true to myself (?!) that I knocked myself out (mentally), grabbed the ropes that still linked to my sanity and hauled my weary body up. Almost instantly I found what I was looking for.

The relief, let me tell you, was immediate. They say adversity shows you what kind of person you are. I didn't come out so well at the end of this one, I'm afraid. As soon as I collected my bags and stepped out into the endless corriodor, I looked at all the shops and the only thing that my mind could say was ' Haha! Up yours!' I should have said "Set course for Earth. Warp speed."

Anyway, I'm home...and it's good to be back.