Rosetta
The Galilean Satellites

“who will I find

calling out my name”

A man, two celestial bodies, a utopia. A utopia, that of rediscovering the origins, which fascinates modern man and tortures him for centuries, reflecting the primeval question: “Where do we come from?”

Some people deceive themselves into thinking that the answer to this question is another question: “Where are we going?”, some deceive themselves into believing that the origins should be sought in movement, and not in stopping to reflect. There are those who dream, and in dreaming, seek. There is you. Who will you find, calling your name? Who will you become once you arrive?

“The nomad in roam,

searching on”

A desperate search takes you, the archetype of man, to the icy oceans of a solitary, cold moon of Jupiter, Europa.

Europa, lover of Zeus, etymologically “well-watered”, the celestial body with the greatest potential to harbor life in the solar system, solitary and majestic. Your only beacon of hope, your redeemer, and your only god.

“Departe”, and you are in orbit. Smoke, fog, clouds, and suddenly clarity comes. Outside the porthole, the Earth slowly receding, our renounced mother left solitary in her orbit by the now independent son, disgusted by the idleness of earthly philosophy, eager to reach the future through astronomical travel.

“Finally I’m coming home”

Total, definitive change of perspective.

The sun, a gigantic milestone of this journey, illuminates the cabin interior with red, boiling and foaming angrily, blinding you with an unknown and alien light, as you are accustomed to seeing it filtered by the Earth’s atmosphere.

“The day of red light

marks my way”

At this point, nothing can take you back, no reconsideration will be granted, everything is only fate and as such must fall upon you and bury us under its monstrous protective wing, positive or negative as it may be.

“Behind the Isthmus of light, lies Europa”

The sun’s warmth, now dispersing, slowly allows the spaceship, the human shell, to return to a state of coldness. Coldness that characterizes the second part of the journey, external coldness that generates frenzy and halts thoughts in a desperate hurry to reach beauty and discover what fate has reserved for us behind that “Isthmus of light”.

The coldness is forgotten, slowly dies, for what your perceptions communicate to you. There she is. You see her in all her splendor, a silver sphere of celestial perfection, beauty of beauties: Europa.

“Itinerant”. The most sincere, poignant, moving declaration of love ever pronounced by a human being, dedicated to his very own future.

“Europa,

set my sails,

on your oceans of ice tonight.”

Tonight.

“This infinite night that envelops the cosmos in unnatural coldness, this mask of death that covers creation, leaving it naked and exposed to the chill of nothingness. Yes, this very night, this night will elevate our souls to unity, this night will make me a man and you, Europa, a woman, joining us as a couple.”

The coupling, the union of opposites, which here generates reflection, and stimulates a definitive and cruel nostalgia that grips your heart and devours it without mercy, nostalgia for what you were fleeing from. But it is not yet time for nostalgia.

“We put our trust in the faith of man, we walk the trail,

crossing over a bridge,

when we saw the beauty that we could be.”

The beginning of understanding, the thought that emerges and looks you in the eye, scrutinizing your soul, telling you what you do not want to hear, what you cannot believe. Hope is still too strong, hope is everything, hope is Europa, hope is the underground rivers rich in life, hope is the oceans of ice, hope is the cold that freezes your soul, hope is the ultimate limit, hope is death.

Europa is here, in front of us, the porthole fogs with our breath. Infinite expanses of ice, planetary infinity sublimated in ice, deep beauty enshrined in solid water.

“I’m wondering,

my time is almost up,

this void is closing around,

my own universe is all in another time,

borrowed time, pay it back,

I miss them all”

Here we are, we are on the ground, immersed in the void. And what can you do, once you have arrived in your promised land, but cry thinking about what you have forever lost?

It is not the cry of a child left by the mother at kindergarten, and it is not the cry of one who has lost the mother forever, it is the cry of one who has moved away from his roots, from himself, and tried to replace them alone, blinded by the future and its possibilities. The cry of one who has been the master of his own destiny and has decided to deprive himself of every belonging for the thirst of having more.

Distant memories of home, solitary piano notes, fragments of conversations never forgotten, colors, and single thoughts, deprived of the whole.

And then comes the total annihilation of every past of yours, the voiding of every meaning, divided as you are from your mother, unlinked from your past, emptied of your soul.

“Au Pays Natal”, the fate collapsing upon you.

A long reflection accompanying you to the end. “An orbit gone wrong” How better to describe this journey within ourselves? Nothing more perfect in technique, nothing more ideologically positive than landing on an unknown moon, nothing more understandable than the primordial search for our origins. And nothing more wrong than the positive outcome.

“I remember your eyes,

and softness of the skin”

“Mother, how can you forgive me after what I have done to you? how can I make myself forgiven, lost as I am and near death?”

Everything ends, everything dies, everything consumes. This small scrap of hope that goes away and fades in the immense cold, just a spark in the great cosmos that lives its brief life arc and vanishes in a few fractions of a second, to be remembered as a fleeting movement from the corner of the eye and forgotten moments later.

“Shell of man, your dream died today

Shell of man forgotten

Shell of man. Living on borrowed time.”

Shell of a man. Humanity emptied. Lost our home, we have only borrowed time left.

You have burned your second, shell of a man, and now you are nothing.