Author: Mark Alexander

Corey Stoll

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Jake McDorman

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One of the strangest—and most unexpected—effects of being back in Phoenix is feeling the profound absence of my father. While my mom had passed before we moved to Denver and I still feel her loss, my dad died while we were there, and my involvement with his passing was minimal and long-distance (something that has caused a continued rift between myself and my sister). Being back here now it’s smacking me up the side of the head and I have to keep reminding myself that he’s no longer just a few minute’s drive away as he’d been before we left.

Ironically however, when I look into the mirror I’m seeing more and more of him staring back at me, and perhaps more disturbingly I’m finding more and more of his well-known stubbornness and general temperament rearing itself in my personality; something I’d just as soon do without if truth be told.

When I was younger I didn’t look like either of my parents, but as I’ve aged, his genes are starting to assert themselves. While I don’t resemble him completely at this age, there’s much more of him showing through than my mom, so hopefully his genes will maintain their supremacy and guard against the onset of Alzheimers that plagued Mom and so many others on her side of the family.

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The surface area of the planet Mars is almost identical to the surface area of dry land on the Earth. What this means is that even if we begin human exploration in my lifetime, it will still take hundreds—if not thousands—of years to properly explore the entire planet; a commitment in time and resources I cannot see humanity making, short of being faced with its own extinction.

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1. Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
2. Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.
3. Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.
4. Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.
5. Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.
6. Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.
7. Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.
8. Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.
9. Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.
10. Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.
11. Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.
12. Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening
13. Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.
14. Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.
15. Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.
16. Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.
17. Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.
18. Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.
19. Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.
20. Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.
21. Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.
22. Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.
23. Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

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One of the tasks I was dreading upon returning to Arizona was going to the DMV. While compared to Colorado (where drivers’ licenses and vehicle registration are administered by two completely separate entities requiring separate visits to different offices) Arizona is heaven sent; it’s a one-stop-shopping experience.

It turns out that it wasn’t all that bad. I had feared that because I did not have my Title, it would turn into a major hassle to get the car registered. (I paid off the car a little over a year after we’d moved to Denver, and the finance company mailed the Title to my old Arizona address after the USPS forwarding order had expired, so I never received it.) Turns out the only issue I had was needing a smog certificate before getting a duplicate Title from Arizona. Once I had that in hand, it was a breeze. I got the Title, re-registered the car in Arizona, and even got my AZ Driver’s License in about 30 minutes.

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I weep for our species. Imagine where we’d be if we weren’t wasting our resources fighting over ideology and bronze-age fairy tales.

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The latest and greatest from New Horizons:

Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers), twice the resolution of the single-image view taken on July 13.

The best is yet to come!

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He turns our heads every time he shows up on the television machine.

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“Amazing delivery, and refreshing message! But, the core of his message is homosexuality is a sin and a shame, but we shouldn’t judge that sin because we’re all sinners. I reject the idea that homosexuality is a sin or a disorder at all. But he can’t come out and say that without admitting the Bible is wrong. And if it’s wrong about that, then the whole ball of yarn unravels.” ~ Crewman

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That’s the phrase I have to use to describe our return to Phoenix. Things are familiar—yet different. I find myself straining old, unused neural pathways to remember where things are and what the best route is to reach them.

That being said, my first impression upon being back is seeing how incredibly easy it is to get around. Compared to Denver, even having to go completely across town is a breeze.

Have I mentioned that I can breathe again? It’s funny, but it seemed like the altitude had only started affecting me within the last year or so, and it wasn’t simply because of being out of shape and having to climb two flights of stairs to get to our apartment multiple times a day.

Most—if not all—of our old haunts are still in business, although as one can imagine, subtle and not-so-subtle changes have occurred over the past four years. It’s also fun seeing how memory has played tricks on me; things that I could’ve sworn were in one location are actually somewhere totally different.

When I was in Phoenix briefly two years ago to attend to my dad’s end-of-life affairs, Phoenix felt alien; it wasn’t home any more. Driving past my old apartment felt like I was viewing it through someone else’s eyes.

That’s different now. Not only does Phoenix now feel like home, in many ways it feels like we never left. But then I’m confronted with something that has wildly changed since our exodus, and I’m reminded that Denver was not, just a bad dream.

Okay, I’m not being fair. We had some very good experiences there, and the first winter was kind of fun. Because of its location, we got to see several things (Devil’s Tower, Mt. Rushmore) that we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. But on the whole, I’m glad to be gone from the place. It was time. Cosmically speaking, I tell myself the entire reason we went there was to get Sammy.

And speaking of the lovable little furball, he’s adjusting to life here more quickly than I could’ve imagined. He loves having a yard to run in and doesn’t seem to mind the toasty temperatures. He does seem to have developed a garden hose addiction, however.

If I have any regrets about leaving Denver, it was that we didn’t get a chance to take advantage of the relatively quick drive up to Yellowstone. It’s still a bit of a hike to get there from Denver, but nothing compared to driving from Phoenix. Then again, the west coast is so much easier to get to now.

Fingers crossed on the job front. I had what I consider to be an excellent interview with a state agency yesterday (as well as meeting with a placement agency that was a complete waste of my time). They liked me, I liked them, but I am up against one other candidate. I’m not going to stress; I know in my heart of hearts that we’re supposed to be here and work will be forthcoming.

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…when you say #SandraBland deserved to be arrested for “being combative”.

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While data and pictures will be downloading for the next sixteen months, NASA’s New Horizons probe already provided humanity with some astoundingly tantalizing photos of Pluto and it’s main moon, Charon.

What strikes me the most about the color photos of Pluto is the color. They look like antique tintype prints. Even when I see the planet with the dark grey Charon immediately next to it, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this is the planet’s actual color.

What’s even more amazing to me is the fact that with the level of sunlight falling on these worlds and the speed at which New Horizons sped past that NASA was able to get any images whatsoever.

Science is cool.

And the fact that they can get closeups of the surface of this quality is nothing short of astounding—with even higher resolution images coming that will download over the coming months.

If Pluto weren’t fascinating enough on it’s own, Charton is revealing just as many surprises.

For example, how do you get a peak rising out of a circular depression? No one seems to know. What it looks like to me is that a space rock came in very, very slowly, and almost had a soft landing on an extremely plastic surface. Not traveling fast enough to form a traditional crater/ray structure, but fast enough to impact the surface and only slightly deform the surrounding terrain.

All I know is that after seeing these few images, it’s obvious that humanity will have to return at some point for an even better look. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but it still fires the imagination—especially when you consider that we didn’t get any sharp photos of Pluto’s much more interesting face:

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Who wants to come help us unpack?

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I am incorrigible.

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The day has finally come. The truck is being loaded. In a few short hours we’ll be on the road to Phoenix.

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