One-way Ticket to Pluto
by Parisianne Modert
“What becomes of the broken hearted?” has been answered by my friend and kindly clock-maker, Ed, with the answer being a one way ticket to the heart of Pluto. Over the last nine years I have imagined the epiphany photos of my beloved ancestral planet again and again as postcards exposing the source world of my nature’s extra-stranded DNA formed brain and my nurtured alienation in life and love appears on screen.
It is more than time for me, a love sickened tragedy, to find the Ice Sea of the Whale’s Tail on the surface of Pluto. The New Horizons space probe has flown by this hearted Pluto without stopping to be served its yellowish elixir tea served with a Charon cookie properly at four, but I must now accept this invitation, because I am lost in destiny’s obsession with a lady more beautiful than 10 million stars being born. My paraphrase of John Gray’s, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and Parisianne is from Pluto” is a testimony to my degrading soul as absentee and falling lost grace of this lady’s tolerance .
Love should be as splendid a beauty as Shakespeare’s Brave New World in which Miranda innocently radiates to her Ferdinand. Love-carved from life leaves me a castrated Romeo without her Juliet. What flight of romantic recourse is there for me, the heartless, given that I gave my heart away to my Juliet in a kiss of no return? What is left of Earth’s soil to heal and sprout anew for a Trans-Neptunian woman knowing her given heart sings only in the garden of her Juliet? What fountain of youth water could ever give me beauty worthy of such a star-struck lady of heavenly choir?
The booster engines fire, dragon-breaths, scorching an Earth I never belonged on. Escape burns the night, a phoenix in flight. My Romeo compulsions to be ever be loved by Juliet are space-bound ashes from Church poison. Forgive me my Juliet. My Pluto Genesis will create my new heart to hear my voice sing again.
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Does this image look goofy to you?
I wish to thank Thorn, Morgan, the staff at A Word With You Press and my friend and prize creator, Ed Coonce for allowing all of us readers and/or contestents to experience “Again”. Being published, being better understood and being part of an artisan community is both a humbling priviledge and an arrogant joy for me.
Where else in our lives do any of us get to be as free, as provocative or uncensored? We are a community dedicated to each other’s freedom of expression.
I wrote this story viewing the viral photo of Pluto’s discovered heart. I recommend this new heart of a cold world as a mantra.
The hick up cadence within “My Romeo compulsions to be ever be loved by Juliet…” should be read as a one word personal-possessive adjective followed by two, four word phrases kissing in order to form one subject phrase before the verb followed by a five word, reflective adjective phrase as to result and cause respectfully. This crescendo sentence is supposed to wobble the reader’s emotions and it is the point where my drowning eyes released tears down my cheeks.
I thank all of you who have commented on or read any, part or all of my three stories. I write to appease my inner category 5 hurricane angst to be able to return emotionally to the calm of its eye-sanctuary, but ask to be published to be better understood. Without readers and commentators that tango of being understood sits out life’s dance. Thank you for dancing with me.
My belief, for my science-orientated friends, is that Pluto is a legit planet with at least five moons which are Charon, Hydra, Nix, Styx and Kerberos. In the next six months as the full, fly-by information arrives back to Earth scientists, I believe my loyalty and others will be vindicated of the magnificence of this tiny planet within the Kieber belt at the far, Ice Dwarf region of our solar system.
The mission of New Horizons continues as must we to new adventures of exploration and discovery. We are but stardusted souls, drawing our pen-lights of life’s pallet of colors onto the dark canvas of cold, heartless sky. Thank you.
Some funny things, not mentioned by my editor-in-chief, happened to allow this story to be written. Yesterday was my be a ditz day. I showed up 4 hours too early to see my therapist, 10 years too late to buy a T-Bird and got lost at an I-Hop in El Cajon, California. So I wish to thank Kaiser Permanente for their patience with me, the Ford dealership next door for not laughing at my request and the kindly waitress who gave me directions on how to get home.
With the two and ahalf hours left I wrote, edited, choose a photo (not the cartoon), cried over the story, printed it, sent them in via e-mail to request publication and slammed the gears to make it back to my psychologist in time to be seen. He was the first critique which was “This would be good art if I didn’t know you, but crap because I do.” Perhaps he understood what this story actually is. Do any of you?
YOU, my dear, are the lives of loves behind the never ending curtains at the bazaar. God helps us if you ever get your hands on a nuclear bomb.
This story Michael is not about Pluto at all, but uses both my interest in Pluto, real discoveries and fantasy of flight to code the real story’s intention. The discovered heart section of Pluto is real, the Whale’s Tale section of Pluto is real, Charon is real, John Gray, the self-help author is real, Shakespeare was real, his play the Temptest of exile and redemption was written. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was written as well with the drinking of poison mixed by a monk of the RCC. A cremated body is turns to ashes, rockets with boosters do fly after scouraging the Earth at take-off. My friend Ed and I are both real as well as his clock made for this contest. Ed actually inspired this story, but it is about my view of my life in relationship with one semi-obvious person and one far less obvious person, both very real.
I am an extremely non-violent person who believes in turning the other cheek 7 X 77 times as Jesus suggests. I’m for zero nuclear devices, zero weapons, zero militaries with one world, one people working in peaceful co-existence for its own survival.
I’m not the monster some people imagine me to be Michael, but I am tragically lost in love. Someday, I hope you and I and whomever you trust can have a more serious talk than we did at Thorn’s 8/30/2014 party where we met. I would truly love that opportunity and I appreciate you comments and thank you for remembering Gary Clark so beautifully.
I also would like to thank the New Horizons’ staff at NASA, JPL, APL at John Hopkins, SwRI for making the unmanned probe mission to Pluto possible. Gratitude goes to Clyde Tombaugh, God rest his soul, for the discovery of Pluto in 1930 as well as his family for allowing the telling of his life story.
Today, two days after writing this story, we are seeing closeup images of “Mountain in a Moat” on Charon as the first humans ever to view such wonder. Love when real is such a new wonder. Love, as does space exploration, rewrites our mapping of pre-conceived beliefs.
“One-way Ticket to Pluto” was written not about the quest for Pluto, but really about a broken hearted lady, “moi”, questioning what Aldous Huxley writes (as quoted here from “Brave New World”), “Ending is better than mending.” and “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
To quote Miranda from “The Tempest” Act 5 Scene 1,
“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world
That has such people in’t!”
You are right Michael that I am more plutoniumesque than an advocate for “plutonic love” which our Editor in Puns in good humor has suggested.
According to Wikipedia, “Plutonium is made from U-238. Pu-239 is normally created in nuclear reactors by transmutation of individual atoms of one of the isotopes of uranium present in the fuel rods. Occasionally, when an atom of U-238 is exposed to neutron radiation, its nucleus will capture a neutron, changing it to U-239.”, but I have no idea what creates “plutonic love” which is why I am the rare combination of a radioactive “Neutron Dance” and a love tragedy colliding “love appears on screen”.
Thank you Michael and you gave me an idea. Ladies and gentleman, today, I announce that I am forming an exploratory committee, in order to consider running for President of the United States.
Actually Michael, think of me as a waterproof Elphaba who got her hands on the ruby slippers that Dorothy from Kansas and has kicked the Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man out into the poppy field outside of the City of Oz in the Wizard’s absence.
How did I manage it…well, Once Upon a Time I impersonated that bubble-twit Glinda and…
Truly you have crossed the River Styx on your journey to find New Horizons. It is journey that Shakespeare, Dante Alegre, and Virgil could never imagine.
It is very elegant praise to be compared to such immortals with wording that reveals both your level of being well read and your discernments as to the underpinnings’ sophistication within this not really a storyline.
I also am pleased with your reserve as to what this writing actually was about, because I think you understand me as well as anyone currently living. I appreciate both your restraint to forlong my coded, dark mystique and the wisdom of your critique. Thank you.
I found your story sensitive & honestly revealing. Thank you for expressing your gift.
Thank you Miryam.
My gratitude to Ed Coonce, DH Lawrence, William Shakespeare, John Gray, Bill Straith, the scroll of Genesis and the mythology story of crossing the River Styx with Charon, boat keeper, towards the lord of the underworld, Pluto. There are two hidden people, one of which I will love eternally and the other I will hate until I can forgive someday. I’d like to thank Paulo Coehlo for inspiring the spirit style of the two Alejandro stories.
“One-way Ticket to Pluto” was my favorite entry of all those I have ever submitted. Love shouldn’t be a one-way tempest or tragedy. This is a note of letting go. Letting go of unrequited love is both an old world death and new world hope quest for a truer love.