A one pager submitted to Dad's writing teacher in West Hollywood. Dad did not begin his brief work, "Space, the Final Frontier. . . ." That would have been plagiarism.
Here we go.
Some time ago, Bea suggested we write about space. The time has come.
Well, space is like time. It expands and retracts. If one has plenty it will take all of it to do the job regardless how minute it is. Space is indispensable. It can be given or taken away. It has an inner and outer capacity.
There is infinity to expansion and a boundlessness to its retraction, depths almost beyond the conception of the human mind. Scientists have further proposed that in the smallest of particles there are billions of smaller orbiting worlds, each on its own path.
One can agree to its palindrome state. There is never enough of it and more than often too much.
It is something that can be used to describe your dearest friend, when paired in the past tense with "out", though there seems to be no recorded instance--to my knowledge--of anyone being described as "spaced in".
Space can be an aperture. The human form is alloted nine of these. I pause so that each of you can withhold the verbalization of this statistic if modesty interposes itself as a consideration. There is no need to count beyond seven, unless you named the forbidden areas as numbers one and two.
California garages have spaces too small for their cars, nor big enough for the storage of disposable articles you just cannot let go of.
The same is true of our closets.
The freeways are unintended parking spaces.
Lastly, there is media space, voices in endless, noisy, intrusive exhortation for your auditory senses; full screens to allow the gods and goddesses of illusion to parade their wares before the world, and persuade us that they come to serve us and provide us with the Good.
Space has the virtue of egalitarianism. It has been said that 'the meek shall inherit the earth." This may not be fully so. There is enough to include all of us, in due time.
