Blog 1917 – 12.24.2020

If I Lived Alone

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SzMsfLVtmB2Beq1OM9LJFSViWi_6Pm4V/view?usp=drivesdk

If I Lived Alone

There are some who mistakenly, I think, believe that we are born alone and that we die alone.

Last night before I lay down to sleep I watched a recent George Clooney movie called, The Midnight Sky, it is a story set mostly in a 2049 future with little hope left for mankind as earth has become an inhospitable place. There are flash backs to years before of a young scientist who discovers a new moon orbiting Jupiter that he believes has the possibility of supporting human life. He is so consumed with having his hypothesis investigated that he chooses to forgo a life of his own to pour all his time and effort into making sure this possibility is fully investigated. There is a poignant scent where a lovely young woman scientist begs him to see his child only to realize finally that he has no time for their child nor her either. His work has become everything to him.

The 2049 story centers around a sole survivor at a large scientific research facility in the far frozen north country. Everyone is frantically leaving the facility to return to their homes and families hoping to spend their last days on the dying planet with loved ones. George Clooney’s character has no family or home and is dying himself from a blood disorder that requires daily transfusions to keep him alive. He tells one of the leaving scientists that he has decided to just stay on alone there as he figures to live a few days longer than those leaving. One mother in the group leaving is frantic because she cannot find her young daughter. Several people try to assure her that her daughter was on a previous evacuation helicopter so she boards the last one to leave.

In addition to flash backs to the young scientist life another parallel 2049 story taking place is that of a crew of five astronauts who are returning from a mission to the Jupiter moon having found it could indeed be colonized. They are racing back with the good news, but are unable to reach anyone on earth through their communications system hard as they try nor the first colony ship that was supposed to have already launched. It did not for everyone with the exception of George has already perished. George discovers a beautiful little girl about eight or ten years old that can hear, but does not speak. She is drawing a picture with color crayons and he asks her, “Are those irises and when she nods yes he asks her if her name is Iris and she nods in the affirmative again.

At first he tries to tell her that he is all wrong to take care of her and tries to get someone to come back for her, but there is no one left to do that.

In addition to trying his best to care for the little girl George is desperately trying to contact the returning astronauts to tell them that they need to return to the Jupiter moon and save the human race there. He soon realizes that the antenna at the research facilities is not large enough to send a signal deep into space. So he bundles up the little girl, packs his blood transfusion equipment, and on a snowmobile with a small trailer on skis in tow they begin a several days journey to a weather station many miles further north with a larger antenna.

George is able at last to reach the weather station and make contact with the surviving astronauts. The female astronaut he communicates with turns out to be Iris, the daughter he never met nor got to know except in his visions of a speechless left behind little girl. Iris the astronaut asks the famous scientist, that she had hoped to meet one day, how he came to be at the research facility and he said that he had gone there hoping to help somebody and she said, “Well, you certainly have.”

I hope this movie review will encourage others to see the movie for themselves and also to convince a few more die hard doubters out there that we indeed are not alone, never have been, nor ever will be, and that we are ever and always encircled about with a great crowd of witnesses cheering us on in this very human race.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sk-ef416oFcIyBk9P3ZyAPa0oUjddrFp/view?usp=drivesdk

100 Years