There once was a guy who used to write lyrics for the Grateful Dead. He called himself “their junior varsity writer.” Great story teller. One day, he falls instantly in love. A cosmic thing. He meets her in Chicago and they discover—believe it or not— that they live in the same building in New York City. Kismet. Cosmic. Someone is watching or the chances are just that good.
A theory: a long, long time ago, two shadow planets orbit the sun. Earth and Theia. They share a sweet spot in the Goldilocks Zone, not too close or too far from the sun. Maybe they could both sustain life. But...crash. They clang into each other. Inevitable? Power trip? Too much heat? You become me?
Molten, the two planets absorb into each other—a twin eating a twin. Splashing debris reforms into Earth and (wait for it) the Moon. The Moon! Can you believe it? Our Moon is a chip off the old Earth. The clang of planets colliding knocks the Moon into orbit. And the Moon, in turn, directs tides, wolves, new loves.
They’re cut from the same cloth, the Earth and the Moon. And the Earth is made of…well, let’s go back. Way back.
Big bang. A blast of initial energy bursts forth. A sun—many suns—happen. Then, once upon a deep time, when our particular sun was just a baby, Earth swirled as not-Earth but pre-Earth, a smattering of gas and dust. Slowly, little particles fling together and fuse. Electrostatic attraction. Love at first sight. The little bits become grains. Little grains become rocks. They pick up speed, heat, pressure, gravity. It’s all elegant violence and every element we know fizzes and fuses in this tantrum-y soup. Clang, the Earth.
Then one fast day—days were only five hours back then, old school—wham! Theia collides into Earth, Earth into Theia. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Paths were star-crossed, inevitable, given enough time.
Is there a lingering cosmic grudge? Guilt? Was it an absolute pleasure? A reverberating clang? The crash, it created the Moon, after all. Made of the very same stuff as us.
In Morocco, they find space rocks—mini meteorites—and they sell like hot cakes. Kids are especially skilled in spotting them. They’re the only ones who see what couldn’t possibly be true. Stardust.
Space stuff falls from the sky, marked with age. Like tree rings, wrinkles and dental records. How old? What happened to you? We know what a Neanderthal’s last meal was. We know if they were injured, pregnant, running scared and starving.
The clang of Theia tilted us, birthed our particular axis, giving us longer days, seasons and spreading sunlight so life can grow just about anywhere. Under ice, on the sea floor, up mountain peaks, or in a skyscraper apartment where your cosmic twin awaits.
The crash changed and charged our chemical make up. We feel the echoes of volcanic impact healing old wounds. Still we round the sun. Rotating, dizzy in love. The impact of Theia? The pull of the moon? All of it? We’re never the same once we meet. We forever tilt and revolve in relationship. We’re never alone, even in the beginning.
Did you know someone was breathing with you? Way back when? A birth parent breathed for both of you. Your life in concert—one breath, two systems. And after you are born into a green Earth in the Goldilocks Zone, you breathe with and because of plants. Deep down, you know when you meet someone, especially if that someone is a sunflower, they’re made of the same stardust as you.
Plants, planets, people—we’re all busy with our own clanging. Accidentally on purpose, the big bang of it all. And every once in a while, we collide with a cosmic twin.
A man, an ex-poet turned tech nerd, meets a psychiatrist with her eyes wide open. Clang! Love is brief, fiery. But wouldn’t you know you it? Her heart stops on an airplane mid-flight. She burns out.
But she lives on in the air.
He flies often in airplanes, communing with clouds, with her, with life, all of us made of the same stuff as space rocks. After that first flash at first sight—the clang—he is open. After her death, he doesn’t close the portal—he can’t. He sees strangers for the first time and knows they’re made of the same stuff. He forever sees the stardust in you. In me. He feels the elemental make up. And what is that but love?
“You’re really something,” he tells her.
“So are you.”
Sparked by This American Life episode 74 (Act 3) which first aired in 1997 and again in 2021. Also check out NASA’s beautiful simulation of the Earth clanging with Theia to birth the Moon.