Thursday, June 8, 2023

Spaced Out

In the last two months I’ve knitted three blankets, one sleeping bag, and I’m halfway through two more throws. Meanwhile, the experts in Utah still have no clue what’s behind all the anomalies lighting up the skies every night on Skinwalker Ranch. At this rate, if they don’t sort it out soon, JoAnn Fabrics will be out of yarn and my wrists will be in traction. At least I do something productive while I binge watch mysterious documentaries. 

I’m addicted to learning about things no one can explain.

Exactly the reason, I think, why they never find explanations. It keeps the sponsors happy and their bank accounts delirious. I think I’m okay with this arrangement. I have an insatiable curiosity and if ever it were to be satiated, I might lose my reason for living. And knitting.

Yesterday morning I woke up in time to sit on my back patio and enjoy what was left of a cool morning in the shade. I brought a cup of hot cocoa out with me, leaned back in my mesh patio chair, and looked up at the thousands of green leaves hovering above me while a refreshing breeze swept across my skin. There were birds hiding in the branches, but I could only hear them, not see them, camouflaged as they were by the dense foliage. And it occurred to me that in about four months every single one of those leaves was going to metamorph or something and fall to the ground on my clean patio like an avalanche of orange, and I’d be forced to sweep their daredevil little lifeless carcasses the entire length of my house and out the gate to decompose.

Leaves are selfish little narcissists.

This might be the reason I got a C- in high school biology.

And then I remembered a story I’ve heard several times about the changing of the colors every fall. Supposedly, all those vibrant reds and yellows and oranges which explode from deciduous stands of trees were there all the time, hiding beneath their green exteriors, just like all those invisible birds who drop poop bombs on my patio table every day. When cold weather arrives in September or, in our case, every February, the sap stops flowing, the chlorophyll starves, and a tree’s true nature is exposed. Or something like that. I reference here that C minus.

I wondered if I could convince a leaf to reveal its true inner self early. What if I carefully skimmed one with a razorblade. Would it uncover a golden underskirt? I ran that idea by my granddaughter, but she scrunched up her forehead, exposing the eleven between her confused brows, and told me, “No.”

Fine. That’s what comes of earning an A in biology. No sense of adventure.

Before long, I abandoned my hypothesis and let my mind wander across other mysteries of the universe. Between the leaves of the tree, I could make out patches of blue sky. Now my thoughts turned heavenward where stars and galaxies and exiled planets like Pluto exist. And, with my thoughts going full circle, I wondered once more, what is going on with Skinwalker Ranch? Could there be visitors from other worlds planning vacations in ours? Are these lifeforms friendly? Are they actually superior to us in intelligence? If so, why do they keep crashing their aircraft into our mountains? Don’t they have mountains of their own? Sure, we’re mesmerized by the speed and vibrant lights emanating from their space age, sophisticated saucers, but don’t you think an advanced race of beings determined to explore outer space should hire better pilots? I do.

That’s why I’m not afraid of aliens. I’m not any good at flying aircraft either, but at least when I know I’m terrible at something I quit making a fool of myself and find something else to do. Like knitting.

That’s not my main concern about UFOs, though, or, as they are now referred to, UAPs, which stands for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and, of late, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, because even scientists who came up with the Scientific Method can’t make up their minds what to call things that they can’t identify.

Here’s my real question about the whole subject, though, whether we’re discussing UAPs in Utah or mysterious lights over Phoenix. Let’s suppose for a moment there really are spaceships which are not of this world but which keep flying over us and crashing into us. And, let’s assume they’re not manned by Artificial Intelligence, the way Washington is, for example.

Who created their pilots?

I’ll wait.

I don’t recall reading in the Bible about civilizations in other galaxies. I’ll admit, there were parts of Deuteronomy and Numbers and even Leviticus which I may have skimmed over in Sunday School, so perhaps in the long list of genealogies recorded in those books some of the names mentioned are of extraterrestrial origin. I mean, you’ve got to admit a lot of them sound pretty weird. Adonizedek comes to mind, although not without a lot of effort. Or Cushan-rishathaim. If my parents had given me a name like one of those, I’d have crashed my spaceship into a mountain, too.

But back to the question of creation and the physical evidence of pathetic piloting. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, and possibly our government is lying when they say they are not developing sub-standard aircraft incapable of making it over a mountain, let alone to infinity and beyond. But what if they’re telling the truth for a change? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That God has a secret family He’s not telling us about?

Oh. That’s not what you were thinking. You were thinking that our government can’t handle telling the truth. And also about that C minus. 

You're right. Good idea. I’ll just pull out those knitting needles and get to work on another blanket. Maybe tomorrow I’ll explore the existence of Bigfoot. I’m pretty sure he’s mentioned in the Bible, too. 





With thanks to Arnet for permission to use the phun photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: UFO ? | Arnet | Flickr