Earth Wars

By Larry Feinstein

Watercolor by Lielzo Azambuja, 2002

I have never been so anxious to tell a story and had so little idea how to present it, without losing you before the second sentence, which is coming right up. Last month, the North Shore of Kaua‘i had a social media explosion that burned up the invisible wires that join everyone to each other up there.

It was an incredibly luminous, almost sphere that just squatted in the sky, while several fighter planes pierced the air around it, seemingly in as much disbelief as everyone else, eyes glued to the sky and phones memorizing the images, frame by frame.

As frequently happens with all sky phenomena, they get explained away, much better than Harvey Keitel, the mesmerizing cleaner in Pulp Fiction. Between us, I don’t really care whether it was a balloon or a spacecraft, because that’s not where my mind has been traveling.

Some of you may know, I try and cover the news on a weekly basis for my podcast. It has truly changed how I look at the world. In some ways, I feel like a visitor to this planet, in utter disbelief as to how we are treating each other and this home of ours. I try and engage all my stories with a kind of virgin view, as if each time is the first time.

Whatever recently happened in the sky had nothing to do with what I’ve been thinking recently and about the dilemma we find ourselves in right now. All of a sudden, I tried to imagine what it would be like for a visitor from some distant galaxy to try and make sense of who we are and how we got to be here.

Do any of you have any idea how immense this universe is? We are talking about billions and billions of light years from here, a ridiculous distance to even attempt to quantify. Honestly, it is like trying to find the borders of forever, which are simply immeasurable.

In this world of the boundless, with infinite possibilities, there must be beings beyond our Earth-bound ability to understand. The odds make Vegas look like a predictable, child’s game. Any beings able to travel these unimaginable distances are far more evolved than we are or could ever imagine being.

If I were some space dude who could live for thousands of years, assigned to keep an eye on Earth’s evolution, I don’t think I’d want to land right now. Of course, I have absolutely no perspective on that phenomenon because I am one of the billions of Earth-bound beings just like you. Imagination is my ticket to ride.

For this fantasmania, let’s assume there’s no separation between me and events as they occur. Let’s also assume I can fly anywhere I want on Earth and see exactly what is going on at that precise moment, doing so with stupefying comprehension.

Now, back here with you, I think it is kind of dangerous to think we are on some kind evolutionary progression, continually improving as the species at the top of the ladder. It would certainly be obvious to me as an intergalactic voyager that earthlings are mired in their own miasma ever since my first visitation.

I wish there was some kind of anchoring point for all of us, something we could all agree upon. For better or worse, when we think about our progression, it is based on exactly where we are at the moment and where we are most likely going to move next, no more than a guess, usually stunningly inaccurate.

I wonder what it would be like to be a sort of being for which we have no human adjectives. I would look at this world with a capability of understanding that has no precedent. Personally, I would like to think all life, however you define it, has embraced its evolutionary energy, each generation feeding the next, wide-eyed and innocent, improving upon itself. I don’t know how it goes out there in the infinite, but right here, it ain’t the case, something any visitor could see.

In many ways, I do feel like I am from another planet. Where I come from, we treat each other with love and respect. Being different is merely a means of definition, absent any value judgment. The need to come together would devour division. Here, we have complicated simplicity, lost in our myopia.

I do wonder what we would look like from a distance. From that intergalactic perspective, empires have come and gone and completely disappeared, long before you and I had books to read about them or fossils to examine. We are being watched.

Let’s say you were cruising this planet for thousands of years, from wherever in God’s name you came from. You know, you’d have to think to yourself, these creatures down here are doing an awful job of providing for their future. This is such a gloriously, beautiful planet, a wonderful place to inhabit, but gratitude is continually trumped by greed.

As beings, who are not married to any sense of time, this exquisite planet will always be here, waiting for them and I think they are patiently waiting, every now and then, shining their light. They will come when we are gone.

• Visit buzzsprout.com/1292459 if you want to hear the news of the week, like you have never heard it before. Or go to www.youtube.com/channel/UCiKB7SheuTWKABYWRolop4g to watch two guys, seemingly having nothing in common, put on a weekly show of what it’s like to be friends.