I'm riding in an old VW bus through a black starry clear night. Stars above, stars around us, stars below, and a great lemon-white moon--with huge rings. Saturn! We're in deep space. No wonder NASA used a VW--it's slow but it gets great mileage, and fuel is crucial on such a long trip. In fact they stripped some luxuries I wish they'd left in--they underestimated the VW's electrical system because it's only 6 volts. A tape player would have been nice; it's a long drive.

A winding but paved road, among fenced fields. Drive along it to a three-way fork. One heads toward a barn over a forested ridge, but our driver picks the middle fork, leading to a creek and little cascades, an eroded gully on the hilly face. The VW can go no farther.

We hike on, lugging the rafts, to where the creek fills the canyon. Pop the cartridges and inflate them, and in we go. I share one raft with two very different women--a brilliant, vain, medal-winning swimmer who I have a crush on, and a Tex-Mex girl named Aurora, sunny and extroverted, who's also pretty sexy. They both splash around freely--fun to watch, but I worry about I fear sharks, or the Titanian equivalent. Our expedition leader, Rocky, a blunt, forceful old woman I dislike (she's a Reaganite and we always argue politics) agrees with me for once, and scolds them "Stop that NOW! We don't know this world, or what predators we'll attract."

I ride for a while in a second raft with a green woman and orange man--a very femme guy. I generally don't trust other men, so Rocky's making me travel with an honest, quiet one, so I'll learn to take men individually.

Sleep in our van that night, outside a tiny farmhouse. Too crowded--I end up sleeping in the greenhouse, listening to a cassette of our last gig. I'm the composer and bassist. Our lead singer is an egotistical guy with an odd rough voice, emotional but somehow a bit fake--saccharine? Maybe that's just jealousy talking. He is engaged to the smart swimmer I have a crush on.

Traveling in the van the next day, they clinch and kiss right next to me. I feel bad. And she opens her eyes and looks at me--unhappily. Is she with him for ego-reasons? They're both so proud and stubborn... once committed, they won't back down. Forever hold your peace...

The shyest girl in the band teases them both. At our next rest break, she leads me out for a walk, says "Don't bother your head about THEIR games! They're silly." I recall a dream earlier in the night, of being horses on a ranch in hills like this, and a 1960s song starts playing in my memory: King Crimson's "Moon Child." Who dances alone, waiting for a sun-child.

To the folk of Titan, I AM a sun-child! From a world baking in brilliant sun, a hundred times what cold overcast Titan gets. Obsessed with that proud girl, I've been blind to the seemingly cold dim moon-child: the shy, skeptical, beautiful girl always beside me. Fool that I am.

And I wake with "Moon Child" echoing in my head... wondering who else in my life I've overlooked. Shy, quiet, femme... Oh.

That's who else I've been overlooking.

Me.

HISTORICAL NOTE: In the 1960s my family explored the West in a red hippie bus. We often stopped at the International House of Pancakes back when the branches really were called that. Illustrations of bus and Titanic Pancakes are 2025, but the black and white portrait of Moon Child is 40 years older; the second digital image I ever drew, with a mouse on an early Mac, Oct. 1985, deep in the computer Neolithic. I scanned this from a crinkled printout, as no digital file survived.

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