Memories from school that I could consider pleasant or barely tolerable are few and far between, but one thing that kept me sane was drawing.
From giant mecha robots with majestic weapons to… more giant mecha robots, the back end of all my notebooks were full of made up futuristic battles between the most bizarre steel and gears factions.
[ Ten. ]
But the other topic that I drew, a lot, was space. I was especially enamored of the Space Shuttle’s design and colors. It looked like a giant panda-ship cruising the sky, becoming white hot upon entering the atmosphere. I think that was one of the aircrafts (or spacecrafts?) that I drew the most back then, awakening my passion for industrial design and concept drawing like 10 years before I had any idea those terms existed.
[ Nine. ]
But one of the most vivid memories I have is of a ‘freestyle drawing’ that we were assigned just to pass time before the bell rang one day. Finally, I could do the thing I loved the most, and not hidden at the back of the notebook – It had to be something Great. Amazing. Bigger than the page itself. And granted, the drawing had no margins in the page. It was all the way to the very border of the paper.
[ Eight. ]
The notebook turned sideways so as to make the drawing horizontal, the lower section of the drawing was the curvature of Earth. The pale blue dot blown up to show just a section on the page, implying that the rest was the vacuum of space. But space was not empty. It had stars. Many of them. I’m sure I purposefully left the sun out of the frame. Rockets, there were at least two. A rough, tiny rendering of 2001’s spin top space station. Of course, the space shuttle over all of them – reigning as the supreme, stylish space design.
But there was something else.
[ Seven. ]
A lone astronaut, floating, securely attached by a line to the Space Shuttle. Floating in space, surrounded by the immense blackness of the universe. A blackness that was the hardest part of the drawing – I think I spent half of my black color pencil on thad drawing alone! But it was a must. Because the blackness represented the unknown. The undiscovered. A frontier as impossible as beautiful.
[ Six. ]
It is the same question that I’ve pondered every time I’ve laid down on grass, or concrete, or sand at the beach, looking into the night sky. Who was the first m’fer that, upon watching the stars for some time, jumped on a boat and said “Yeah, I think I can get my bearings from those lights up there”. Can you imagine the brass balls it takes to do something like that? A lot of foolishness mixed with courage, of course. Maybe a bit of spirits would help. But that’s the beauty of humanity.
[ Five. ]
The unknown. Discovering new lands. New seas. New tundras, deserts, cliffs, plains, places. Conquering the sky. Conquering space.
Flying to distant planets, perhaps?
I can understand if you think it isn’t necessary. It’s way too dangerous. It’s pointless. It’s eccentric. But I’m sure those who stayed on the shore while the madman got on his star-guided boat thought the same.
Maybe the madman didn’t come back.
[ Four. ]
But the gist is the idea. The spirit of exploration. Conquering, if you will. Because it takes a lot of ingenuity and insanity at the same time. To thrive in the face of the uncertain, to scoff at the odds against you, to say, even in the presence of certain death, that you will do it anyway.
And if you don’t make it, someone eventually will.
[ Three. ]
So, I witnessed something beautiful today. A 200-ton monster of a rocket falling from the sky breaking the speed of sound, its thunder roaring miles away, braking at the dazzling last minute just to be caught by two equally humongous metal chopsticks.
I don’t want to bother you with the technical details, but the word ‘exact’ doesn’t make it justice. Of course with such metal behemoths one should have some leeway, but the precision of such a feat of engineering is something out of this world.
[ Two. ]
And the ‘out of this world’ is what we mean. The impossible. How ironic is that just the night before I decided to stream a game that mimics the ‘catching’ of the rocket by the tower. And I remember that I thought level 17 was impossible. Then level 18 took me more than half an hour of trying. Then finally nailed the last level of the game to win a fulfilling accolade:
“Congratulations. You’ve achieved what few can. Your perseverance reflects humanity’s drive to reach the stars. They are no longer distant – but worlds waiting to be explored”
[ One. ]
It’s dangerous out there. There is no guarantee of return. There is zero guarantee of success. You could be risking all you’ve got just to be forgotten. But you’re not doing this to become a byline in history books. You’re doing this because you owe it to yourself. To behold the unknown with your very eyes. To set yourself impossible goals and strive to achieve them. To raise humanity over cynicism and mediocrity. To honor the giants on whose shoulders you stand. To look into the horizon and say,
“Yes, I’m doing this. Whatever it takes”
May the stars smile in your favor and greet you with their sublime light.
[ Liftoff. ]
Much Love and Bliss,
Jesús.
The Body Language Guy
