Measure my life in coffee spoons? Nah. Album covers.
One Small Step
Happy 40th anniversary, Tranquility Base.
Peace
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Did I mention that Heliopoli was a circular city?
Did I mention that it is ringed and trisected by the monorail?
Did I mention that the pedways create a symbol that can only be seen from above?
Yes — yes, I did.
Good.
Just wanted to make sure.
The Balloon Ferry
It is rumored that the excavation of the city of Heliopoli will cease operations on Oct. 4, 2009, exactly two years after its start. Though I can’t confirm this, it is true that nearly all the major structures have been unearthed and described, excepting the Lightworks, the Slideway Shopping Mall and the Museum of Futoria. There are plenty of details to explore, however, so it is hard to say whether this record will merely change slightly at that time, or become its own archeological artifact (and we have wandered from our course occasionally anyway). Certainly there is a great amount of cataloging to be done given the amount of mood rings, Uncandles, Fidgets, fiber-optic lamps, and bean-bag chairs that have been found, not to mention the necessity to pay tribute to the color lime green.
At any rate, more major structures might be uncovered as the excavators redouble their efforts, or merely stumble upon them. Take the Balloon Ferry, for instance.
As mentioned before, Heliopoli is a circular city that never lacked in transportation. It is ringed and trisected by the monorail and honeycombed underground by the Metro. It sports slideways and pedways, and its citizens make use of the ubiquitous uniped single-wheel transport. So why would the city need a Balloon Ferry?
At opposite ends of the city lie platforms that are now known to be stations for hot-air balloons. These were at first thought to be unfinished monorail stations until excavator Theronomous Moon wandered past the city into the desert and found sprays of color just under the sandy surface. These proved to be buried portions of hot-air balloon fabric. The rest fell into place.
As a transportation system, hot-air balloons would be quite efficient; as an aesthetic experience, unparalleled. One floats above the city; there is no wind, since one is traveling with it. This aerial view can make one appreciate the city’s design like never before. The city’s own citizens can then apprehend its circularity, its aesthetic aplomb, its radial symmetry, its shining wonder; and there is evidence that the pedways surrounding the Central Plaza create a certain pattern, a symbol, that can only be ascertained from above. Besides, to travel from one end of the city to the other could not be achieved faster than by hot-air balloon.
But no. The theory doesn’t work.
The gondolas that have been found attached to the balloons can hold at most two people. This is hardly an efficient transportation system, or cost-effective for any other purpose — if the purpose was to carry people.
So now we know, and know that there can be other reasons for the city’s need for a Balloon Ferry than just what lies at the surface:
The balloons of Heliopoli were not for looking down from but for looking up at.
There would be at least two or three balloons aloft at any given time. Carrying only one or two attendants, they decorated the air with a looking up, a striving to.
At any hour of the day, a good portion of the citizens of Heliopoli were shading their eyes and gazing into a rainbow sky.
It's Official
I have been duly chastised by the excavators for neglecting an element of Heliopoli that if not included in the city’s description would be like trying to make seawater without salt, or to deny a firmament its shining stars.
There is no proper classification for this thing. It is not just a color or a cloth or a pattern, and its interpretation has changed over time. I am further hampered by not being able to find a photo I have permission to use as an example, and any samples in the city itself have so degraded with time that they are useless, so I have used different, though appropriate, images instead. This thing is locked in its own time anyway — its proper time — so its image is always brighter in memory than anything even a digital photo can reveal.
You might have been introduced to tie-dying in someone’s backyard, with buckets of dye and rubber bands and white T-shirts. The method has to be taught, can’t be learned from a book, like making tallow candles or blowing glass. Tie the rubber bands around the T-shirt, tighten it up, thus and so. There were some who knew how to make certain patterns, methodical, while others just waited to see; but when the rubber bands were taken off the shirt after being dipped in this dye and that, it was always a surprise; you never really knew what you were getting, and that was part of the fun –
a sunburst, always — or a star –
Then in the 1980s we got the manufactured kind, made in a factory, always the same stupid spiral, they all looked the same — which was never the point — and it became a fashion, a self-conscious referent, a wry wink to the past gabbled by New York types through their rectangular, black-framed glasses, snarkily summarizing culture — we are only observers — and stuffing all into a box labeled “Retro.”
That was never the point. And now it can never again be what it once was. We are all too self-conscious for that. It will never again be sunshine backyards amid grass clippings — the smell of cut grass — or “arts ‘n’ crafts” or rainbow colors hanging on a clothesline to dry. It will never again be a surprise sunburst. It will never again be a surprise. It is premade now, hanging in a store.
Wryness is death to surprise. Cynicism destroys optimism.
Snark kills voice.
Did you think we were stupid? Yes, we knew it was about psychedelia and where that came from — you were never taught how to tie-dye from a non-hippie, were you? — but it didn’t matter. We ignored that part. It was just cool. And fun.
For its sunburst and its infinite colors; for its encapsulation of creative and otherwise freedoms; for its obeisance, we see now, to chaos theory’s fractals and never-repeating iterations; for its dark genuflection to drug culture we can ignore; for its bright bursting optimism –
for its representation of an unself-conscious act now turned to stone –
the official something of Heliopoli is –
the tie-dye T-shirt.
