You know that feeling when you’re playing Jenga, and the blocks are stacked remarkably high, and then someone bumps the table? And as the tower wobbles, everyone just watches in wide-eyed panic, willing it to stabilize with a desperate, silent prayer: Please don’t fall, please don’t fall.
I can only assume that’s how it felt last month, when technicians were working on NASA’s new space telescope and a very important clamp suddenly unclamped, sending vibrations coursing through the entire instrument. Officials didn’t provide details about the mood in the room at that moment, but it must have been something along the lines of Oh no, oh no, oh no. This particular Jenga tower is a $10 billion telescope, and NASA has been playing the game for 25 years, carefully arranging piece after piece to produce one of the most sophisticated scientific instruments in human history.
Volcanoes all over the world make their own magic. Eruptions at the bottom of the oceans grow shimmering cities of glass. Lakes of molten rock pool at the top of the glaciated Mount Michael, a volcano hiding on an island just shy of Antarctica. Vertiginous tree canopies full of wild animals embellish the steep slopes of Arenal, a volcano spiraling into the clouds in Costa Rica. Wine grapes coat the flanks of Etna, the Roof of the Mediterranean, while its peak coughs, simmers, and sizzles as a thunderstorm of its own design dances in the night above. Lava flinging itself out of the sea 600 miles south of the Japanese mainland is, at this very moment, piecing together one of the youngest islands on Earth. The lava of Kawah Ijen, a volcano in Indonesia, glows blue and purple at night as the sulfur inside bursts into flames. And not too long ago, just outside of Tokyo, two lifelong friends scrambled up a frozen throne of flame to reach a gate lingering far above the clouds.
A week before my thirty-first birthday party, I punched a wall. Not thin plaster; cement. I was angry so I punched it a few times. I wanted but failed to break my hand. I wanted to break my hand so I could go to my next doctor’s appointment (the eighth in three months) and have something to show. “Look. It’s broken. Fix it.”
The party was small, my husband’s idea, immediate family only. My two-year-old nephew peed on our brand-new rug, after which we ate mussels and home fries, neither prepared by me. I lost control of my neck muscles at the dining table, head lolling, and everyone pretended not to notice, except my mother who kept a tight, panicked grip on my thigh. Later, after cake, I maneuvered around the living room using the walls for leverage because my legs refused to carry my slight frame without support.
The Singapore bubble had indeed formed as promised. I still had my Singapore Airlines ticket for mid-December and even Alan Joyce was sounding happy about international travel prospects. I had been double vaccinated months earlier. What could go wrong?
Omicron had other ideas, of course.
It’s impossible to read those opening lines without wondering whether this sly and witty author is prompting us to reflect on how we might remember him — a bit of a tease since he surely knew his works would be impossible to forget.
With “Rock Concert,” Myers brings his interview-based approach to a topic so sprawling that it had the potential to breach the barriers like the crowds at Woodstock. Clearly the author had to make some rules: He steers away from sex and drugs, favors mainstream rock and ends the show in 1985.