Perhaps my most bizarre experience in the entire NaNoWriMo process occurred as a conversation with a random seat mate on the flight home from Thanksgiving, the short leg from Detroit to State College. In general I know that I tend to solicit conversation about spiritual topics, including religion as well as the philosophical discussion of scientific ideas. While visiting my family in Minnesota, for instance, such conversations are commonplace and I had already had my fill of this discussion. The lady sitting next to me, a Pakastani woman and a current Hubert Humphrey fellow at the Penn State college of education, started talking as we sat down and reminded me a bit of one of my great aunts. I typically don’t talk with airplane passengers, not because I don’t enjoy it but because I never seem to be next to talkative ones.
After asking me my field of study, she remarked that she was skeptical as to whether or not we had really landed on the moon. I was taken aback a bit that a Hubert Humphrey fellow doubted the space program, but the conversation drifted to psychology–her field of specialty–and spirituality. She was a Muslim, “by the book” in her words, yet she also believed in the universality of religion. I found myself alternating between agreement and disagreement with her statements. After she had expounded the value in adhering to your religious tradition while realizing that they do not really conflict with others, she proudly proclaimed “for after all, we are the dominant species, the masters of this world”. Our conversation only lasted for about the first third of the flight, but I was surprised at how quickly our discussion had cut to the core of these issued I had been working through all month. I know that the word astrobiology always gets interesting reactions, but how likely was it that the conversation would involve spirituality in a manner so relevant to my month-long project? She brought it up after all. Maybe I just radiate an aura to people that invites religious dialogue, or maybe I just signal for it in uncanny ways. Still, it seems almost too convenient that the one break I took from writing while flying was my conversation with this woman. In all honesty, during that conversation I felt like I was living in my book. I almost included a version of that conversation as a chapter in this book, but I decided against it. My character’s story is what it is, a process that unfolded as he met new people and discovered new ideas, but my story is the journey of constructing this book as I live out my life. The process consumes you and becomes part of who you are, shaping your experiences, interactions, and even your dreams.
Jacob Haqq-Misra
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