Why a Book Primarily about UFOs/UAP is Named After A Loose, Unofficial Fraternity Named for An Unusual Pen — Or— Is Earth Really Just A Bad Reality Show?!
It’s difficult to write about anything on this blog right now when the daily horror emanating from Ukraine seems to bring more of the same – and then some – with every new dawn. Lives and infrastructure shattered, homes destroyed, global geo-political stability rocked sideways like an errant cue ball suddenly driving the eight ball toward the far pocket, friends and families tragically separated, some perhaps forever.
The world spins on an uncertain axis again, a dark time with echoes of past history repeating, and the future suddenly the big crapshoot it’s probably always been….?
Last night an old friend texted me, “Now would be a good time to contact alien friends and acquaintances and ask for an intervention in Russia. Give them a map with Moscow in high highlights. If only?” If only, indeed. But it’s more likely we haven’t earned the right to that kind of interstellar intervention when we continue to repeat the warring human foolishness that shapes history as countries and empires clash endlessly in conflict.
I think this darkly comic meme below that recently launched onto the Internet probably reflects the ET reaction (and rationale for not overtly acting to mitigate these sinking affairs): We’re just a really bad reality show. Poorly scripted. Littered with characters as shallow as they are unappealing. Soulless? Disaster prone…. “Still fucking peasants as far as I can see” (John Lennon).
Is the planet just a really bad reality show?
However this thing breaks – and no one seems to know – it’s important to gather in solidarity with Ukraine in ways big and small. And to embrace those closest to you as the pieces fall into place, or disperse in unexpected, unfathomable directions. It may or may not be fitting, but the content below was in the queue before the hostilities began. It answers some questions that radio and podcast hosts have asked frequently since my book was published last summer: Why is a book about UFOs/UAP named after an unusual pen (“the first pen to write in space”) – and what is the Space Pen Club?! So here goes…
The Space Pen Club stems from the writer's camaraderie with college classmates that comprised the club as the Vietnam war grinded to a bloody close. It was a mostly trippy collection of self-made Merry Pranksters who capriciously turned the Fischer Pen company's advanced line of Space Pens into a symbolic icon, representing – at least to me -- self-exploration, cosmic consciousness and communication, transcendence (and the occasional quest for beer, girls, tuneage and controlled substances).
Think of it perhaps as a tie-dyed version of the Dead Poets Society. Only in this society, club members teach other and themselves in a quest for learning and fellowship (“the Fellowship of the Pen”). Later, in writing the book over 10 years, off and on, the pen and the club also became symbolic for anyone striving to make contact. Or to expand one’s consciousness through whatever means, chemistry, herb, meditation, to become true explorers of realities, seen and unseen.
Are you in that club? It’s not The Matrix
Our late founder, Dennis, professed long ago that the Space Pen represented “possibilities.” Today, that simple statement travels and resonates to the period we’re in on many levels. Imagine if we had a true disclosure between world governments and off-world visitors. If the reality of a universe populated with other sentient beings, however advanced, could interact with us, would it change our ways finally to the better? Dan Aykroyd, who so graciously endorsed my book, asked some very similar questions that point to the possibilities that “the phenomenon” represents:
“Who owns these hyper-advanced off world aerodynamic platforms? Who controls their obviously intelligent non-human operators? And if these things are known to anyone, why can't the technology be shared NOW? The mechanisms and fuel sources in these crafts could help save our planet and provide basic needs for millions -- power, clean water and climate temperance.”
There weren’t any real fraternities at the college I attended where The Space Pen Club formed. But the fraternity wrought around a pen among those who made up the club is pretty remarkable. Some of the core members still hold regular gatherings to fly fish, hike, canoe, golf and just hang out. All through covid, they held weekly zoom calls. It was touching to see those bonds so strong still after years and years have passed.
As one member, Chats, a former lobbyist in the nation’s capital, pointed out, “I have found few people that have stayed in such close contact with their college friends as this Space Pen group. Many people have a couple of classmates with whom they stay in touch. But I don’t know anyone of our generation who stays in regular contact with 10 or 12 classmates, many from the same freshman year dorm floor. There were so many reasons for our group in that class to be such a cohesive bunch, including the camaraderie inherent in living on a remote campus, our common opposition to the war and draft…the shared exploration of new consciousness…”
A Space Pen gathering from another heady time and place
“Perhaps some of those were unique to our time and place, but they were definitely built on larger societal currents. Like every generation, we thought that we were going to change the world. But for us there were very specific things that middle class white, Catholic college kids wanted to change, Peace, Race, Social Justice, more openness for gender and sexual preference roles and the beginnings of greater environment awareness. It was a pretty heady time.”
Today, as we find ourselves still mired in yet another heady time, we need every generation to try to change the world, together. Again.
Think of the possibilities if do. And the unthinkable possibilities if we don’t.
