September 16, 2019
Dear Eric,
The distance between me now, here at home by the sea, and Siberia, is about 200 miles. However, the distance between me at Siberia, and my home by the sea, is much greater than that. It's almost immeasurable.
To retain The great distance of Siberia While here Among my fellows What a feat!
While at Siberia, I float always like a spaceman above the earth. I can look down from two-hundred and fifty miles and see continents and oceans passing below. There's silence and cold and depth and empty. Yet I do not die out there in that space, though sometimes I know the desert space could kill me. Things happen up there in the distant depths of Siberia. I perform experiments I could not try on earth. New positions of words on paper and ideas which rise from moment to moment as though summoned by solitude. The longer I stay, the deeper the thoughts seemingly become. As if from deep space. Stranger always with the depths.
When I return home, the space follows me for a time, like a bubble of air surrounding a hunting spider which can dive underwater for small fish. For a few days I march like Caesar through the world - not bold with vanity or power, but instead richly alive with the energy, confidence and resolve of someone who has survived something dangerous, who has been where they should not, who has plumbed the near depths of space, seen our small sphere of living and looked beyond to the unawake and unalive screaming empty of dissolving entropy. How could the infrastructure, comedy and drama of our mere human fraternity unsettle anyone who has seen such things? How could death even shake their resolve? At least for a day or two...
But then the effect begins to fade... And I must plan and conspire my return to outer space. Though it scares me always to go back. Real fear. For I do not always wish to see what isn't there. But when I do...I can never look away.
My name is Kurt Bell.
You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone.
Be safe... But not too safe.