Fifty Cultural Perturbations

A Home that Was a Former Space Capsule

From low-earth orbit to Southern California, by way of the North Pacific Ocean. Windows had been cut into the heat-proof hull, and window boxes installed. A small, standard collection of herbs grew there, green leaves in the sunshine against the blue and yellow logos of space agencies and aerospace companies. A television aerial protruded from the top edge, like a canned food pull-tab, not quite separated along the extent of the perforated metal as designed. On the inside, the curved hull had been leveled into a floor with the addition of a custom-cut piece of plywood, reinforced by struts. One had to step up from the outside ground level to enter. Inside, there was a bed against the far wall, a table, and curtains over the windows that looked distinctly out of place hanging freely under the gravitational pull of the earth. Most of the storage compartments were still accessible, even standing on the ground, and were in use for various things, the specific contents unknown.

It was recycling, of course, but also more. It was the repurposing of an image at great expense. People had lived in the capsule for many years, and that was still the use. But the environment in which the living space existed was so different, as to make living itself a different task. From surviving a pressurized existence in a vacuum, to inhabiting a hillside as an unofficial tourist attraction, and a statement about the goals of society. Quite a journey for any human being to make, to live inside such a thing.

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