Where Do You Go Alone

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love everyone you know everyone you ever heard of every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering thousands of confident religions ideologies and economic doctrines every hunter and forager every hero and coward every creator and destroyer of civilization every king and peasant every young couple in love every mother and father hopeful child inventor and explorer every teacher of morals every corrupt politician every superstar every supreme leader every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>- Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In 1977 Voyager I was sent into interstellar space on a mission to reach a star 17.6 light-years from Earth. Included on the spacecraft was the Golden Record or planet Earth's musical message in a bottle consisting of sounds and images selected to represent the life and diversity of our planet. The music chosen to be on this interstellar mixtape was handpicked by Carl Sagan and includes the likes of Guan Pinghu Louis Armstrong and Blind Willie Johnson. When I first listened to this record one particular song which stood out for me among the rest was written by a singer from a remote hilly village in the heart of Goa known as Kesarbai Kerkar - a woman whose legacy on Earth has literally crumbled to dust while her voice still lives on far away among the stars.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Kesarbai's raga Jaat kahan ho akeli gori was launched into space the same year she died.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>A billion years from now when the Earth is nothing but dust her voice will serve as a reminder among the debris:</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The universe wastes nothing.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>What is lost is never truly gone it is taken back.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>What we create now will live beyond our own years.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>This grief is only temporary.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Divided into five chapters named after the different full moons this book is meant to represent the cycles within each one of us.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Given the chance to do it all again relive all the love grief joy and heartache of being alive-would you take it?</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Eventually we will all be embedded among the stars.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>This is my message in a bottle to the universe.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>- pavana reddy</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>pavanareddy.com</span></p>