Maybe We Are Alone in the Universe

Glazed Cruller in Space by Kenny Scharf

We had walked all day over a rough and barren lunar landscape with nothing but two flashlights, a few bottles of water, some avocado sandwiches and oranges. A was leading the four of us to the lava flow on the Big Island, and after he said—pointing to portions of the rocky landscape with his walking stick—“when we come back this way in the dark, keep an eye out for the silvery looking lava, because that’s the lava that hasn’t cooled completely and the crust is pretty fragile,” I started to wonder: was I trusting these people I barely knew with my life? 

Then the laces of my hiking boots came untied so many times that I finally gave up retying them, and B said, “I’ll bet you that I can tie them so they won’t come undone.” I didn’t think he could do it, so I said, “All right. What do you want to bet?” And he said, “If the laces stay tied, you take me out to dinner. And if they come untied, I’ll take you to dinner.” I thought, “Is he trying to seduce me?” because even though I was married and he was married, the day before he’d put his hand on my leg and explained why he wasn’t monogamous, though I had already told him that I was monogamous, and B’s close friend C must have wondered about that, too, because she had a very strange look on her face as he knelt there before me, carefully tying the laces first on one shoe and the other. I thought: oh, God, what have I gotten myself into? 

But when the sun had set and we finally reached the river of brilliant red and orange molten lava oozing slowly down towards the sea, I squatted down to stare at it, utterly mesmerized, remembering an article I’d once read in the New York Times titled, “Maybe we are alone in the universe.” The article described how scientists who were searching the universe for other planets that could sustain intelligent life had not been able to find any. Maybe there were only a very few such planets, they had started theorizing, and maybe this one—our beautiful blue-green marble of planet Earth—was it. And the article went on to list the conditions the scientists were looking for, and one surprising feature they considered necessary for intelligent life was “plate tektonics,” (the instability of the earth’s crust, they said, was what gave rise to the variegated landscape of our planet—the oceans, the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, the deserts—which in turn gave rise to the variegated life forms necessary for the evolution of intelligence). Now there it was now right in front me, plate tektonics, the luminous, pulsing molten rock pouring out of our earth’s crust, and I felt suddenly that I was looking right into the source of my life, the source of all life on the planet. So I took an orange from my backpack and tossed into the lava (Pele, the volcano goddess, loved oranges and gin, I’d heard) and said a silent prayer, the first prayer of my life: “Thank you for this wonderful, ecstatic life.” 

Then it was over. “Hey, look!” B was saying, as he lifted a long metal object up off the ground. “A golf club!” Then he walked up to the edge of the lava flow and poked the tip of the golf club (the head had already been burned off) into the molten lava and swirled it around, creating luminous, pulsing patterns. “Oh, yeah!” said A, laughing with joy. “That is so cool!” Then B lifted the golf club (or what was left of the golf club) out of the lava and we watched the molten lava and melting metal drip back into the flow. “Want a turn, man?” B asked A. “Hell, yes,” A said. 

I looked down at my feet. My shoes were still tied.

by Nina Zolotow

• Subscribe to Delusiastic! here • Follow Delusiastic! on Facebook and Nina on Instagram •