Well,
that was a short trip, complicated by President
Obama's announcement.
Hahahaha!
Ask not whether astronauts can get to an asteroid — ask what the
astroidians think of that. Although my
publishers there had planned my itinerary, and samples of my latest book were boxed for tastings in every supermarket on the rock, central-government authorities stepped in because of disease fears. As I reported earlier, they quarantined me on
Waystation Limbo because they calculated that I would be a "risk"— the Twitter Anna of Asteroid * even though I assured them I am clean. I not only don't tweet, but hardly ever crow.
But their trust in me was shaken by another earthy epidemic that is only now abating:
Facebook. They do keep up with our manias, so the problem there is that, though I've never
Facebook'd and have always hated its subteen-tackiness, my
astroidian friends (and I thought I had a few close friends) think I've only used them, that they are friends of convenience. How do you reassure friends of a very other culture and atmosphere that they really
are friends in the
pre-
Facebook sense? I haven't been able to, so these past weeks have been worse than purgatory in
Waystation Limbo. There are many travellers there because Asteroid * has stringent border controls, and
Waystation Limbo is both conveniently out of sight and unfortunately, out of mind.
When travellers get bored, they get hungry, and on
Waystation Limbo this means dangerous. I hitched a certain shuttle home, though a patch on our beautiful blue ball makes Earth look like a boiled humbug--all that swirling orange and black.
There is so much to explore here. If you can get to London, go see
BUZZ: A Celebration of British Bees & their Flowers.
The show features paintings and drawings by Valerie
Littlewood, portraitist to the true royals. I've written about her works before,
here. Her sitters are happily, live.
