Atlantis Flies

Cape Kennedy, Florida
July 12, 2001

The shuttle Atlantis, lifts off on STS-104.

"Ten nine eight seven six five four...main engine ignition..."

The pale white shuttle gleamed under orange strobes as sparklers burnt off any excess gas under the engines.

At five miles distance, the spacecraft, with its white booster rockets and orange fuel tank, looked like a child's toy sitting alongside a erector set.

A voluminous billowing of grey-white smoke, glowing orange in places, rose up and swallowed the scene.

"three two one...we have LIFTOFF!"

Scattered clapping around me, one collective intake of breath as the black-pointed nose poked out from the cotton balls of smoke. Rising in slow motion, upon a pillar of orange white flame, the Atlantis stretched away from the launch pad, surging up on a single white leg of fire and smoke. I dropped my binoculars and took in the brilliant fireball rising into the early morning sky. Thin cirrus clouds glowed incandescent, pulsing like a fluorescent light being turned on; the horizon shone and long shadows danced across the water.

Yet the night remained otherwise silent, un-breathing, unmoving; like a dreamy vision.

Suddenly, a thunderous boom swept across the dark lagoon and grasslands, engulfing the crowd on the causeway. A collective hue and cry rose up, we shouted with exhilaration, joy, and triumph. I heard myself cheering, laughing and crying. Our sounds lost themselves in the rumbling crescendo which shook the air around us.

The detached voice from mission control rattled off key points in the shuttle's escape from our Earthly bonds. A slight orange glow as the booster rockets separated, falling away from the whiter flame of the shuttle engines. Three minutes later, the blue fire shrank to match the remaining night stars, and became lost in the heavens. The Eastern horizon began to glow a lighter blue.

Reflecting on the moment, a common silent hush befell those around me. More than just the 104th mission to space, the heaven-ward gaze into the infinite reminds us of the mystery of our owns lives and the poignant hope embodied in our dreams.

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth..
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Cuba Libre

Havana, Cuba
July 4, 2001

I arrived illegally in the country that is a declared enemy of the US on our own independence day. How fitting. I must have fallen a long way from leading Marines in Desert Storm!

That being said, the Cubans I met seem to love Americans and most cannot understand the animosity for Castro. I see classic 1955 Chevy´s plying the roads here, reminiscent of American Graffitti, as well as a time of friendship with the United States.

Walking the Mercado in Havana, which runs along the waterfront, the place can easily be mistaken for Bombay. Run down buildings interspersed with outdoor cafes under fluorescent lights adjoin lovely restored buildings in warm pastels. Young couples strolling arm in arm complete the scene.

Ambling through La Habana Vieja, the historical district of the city, transports one right back to Spain, with Barcelon-esque alleys and pedestrian Prados opening up to a hidden square facing a cathedral, lit softly by orange lights in the bell towers. Underneath, short palm trees set off a section of umbrellas like a sprouting off mushrooms in the moist shelter of a tree. Here, revelers sit to the evening breeze, drinking Mojitos and Cristal, the local Cuban brew. Salsa music plays in the background.

Regal hotels rise alongside billboards proclaiming the revolution with a portrait of Che, as he is know here, sans last nombre. Cuba presents a mixture of modern culture, with jazz clubs and partying youths; set alongside the tributes to revolutionaries, whose time seems to have passed, but whose legacies loom large.

Failure on Kilimanjaro

18,000 feet above sea level
Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
3 am, March 7, 2002

Me taking a rest break (and posing for The Thinker) among the volcanic rocks of Kilimanjaro, March 2002

I failed.

I do not believe it.

My God, I, Michael Seto, failed.

I gave up. I surrendered. I allowed the specter of failure to defeat me. I turned around and headed back down the mountain, short of even the first peak, Stella Point, on Mount Kilimanjaro.

My guide, Salim, tried to urge me on, but the decision stood finalized in my head. For the last two hours, each step required a herculean effort, straining just to place one foot in front of the other; barely maintaining my balance with trekking poles in each hand. I carried nothing except my recalcitrant body and a few candy bars, Salim relieved my of my light backpack an hour ago. My head ached from the 17,000 feet altitude, drunken with hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain), and laboring under a blanket of fatigue.

At this point, I cared nothing for what my friends would say about turning back; I cared nothing for what I would think of myself for turning back. I could not even remember why I was here! What was I trying to prove? I thought of nothing in my reduced brain function; except laying down and sleeping, as capable and temperamental as an eight-year old child.

Defeat hung around me like the early morning fog on the mountain. Humiliated, I did not want to face the cook and my porters, who cared for me for the last four days, just so I could make this attempt up the mountain. I slunk back into Barafu Base Camp, where our summit attempt started, hours ahead of the other climbers, who undoubtedly reached the summit and were celebrating as I lay in my tent.

Failure and I share a long relationship. One of me always running from it's insidious shadow, which drives us toward it's brother, success, in a desperate way, grasping for it like a life preserver. Forever just a step behind me, failure stood waiting to pounce at the first sign of indecision, or hesitation or God forbid, weakness.

I felt its cold embrace upon me not a few times in my life. Yet, I feel that I have never stood face-to-face with failure in a real meaningful way, where my whole life might crumble around me if failure won. No, things have always seem to come easy to me: grades, friends, success, money, and happiness. So when I did face potential failure, it was always with a smug self-confidence, the notion that I still held an ace-in-the-hole; that I would outsmart and outmaneuver its deadly grasp.

For my entire life, I managed to get by without pushing myself to the limit, even in the Marines and on Wall Street. I managed to surmount any challenge with my physical, mental, and spiritual reserves untapped.

Eighty-five percent effort seemed to be all required of me to succeed. So I only gave that much, never red-lining my capacity, never stress-testing the machinery, never looking into the abyss without a safety line around my waist. I have been cheating failure most of the time.

Fear of failure constituted one of my primary motivations in a lot of my life. The fear of looking incompetent, or stupid, or unathletic; which would reveal my true unworthiness as a person to the world. The Emperor wearing no clothes, the real Wizard of Oz exposed. People would see what a fraud I am.

This made me strive for success, not so much for the sake of success, but for the fear and loathing of failure.

Our society worships success. Winners stand venerated, losers excoriated. Pressure to succeed weighs on the mind of all men (women too, I'm sure, but I can only speak for men...well, maybe just me.) This got passed on from the "must slay the woolly mammoth and make fire" days and evolved to "must get gratifying job, buy house, have kids, satisfy partner emotionally, financially, sexually, spiritually etc." Otherwise you are offically a failure; and as such means being humiliated, ostracised, and castrated (symbolic).

As we get older, our failures get more spectacular and public (Mars Explorer, Challenger, Milli Vanilli); yet like protagonist Rob says in "High Fidelity" to his girlfriend, "if you really wanted to mess me up, you should have gotten to me EARLIER" (emphasis mine).

The failures that stand out most in my mind took place when I was young, when my naivete and sense of omnipotence was greatest: Third grade - sitting with Tanya (the blond girl scout), my friend, and being set upon by a bunch of the guys, who pinned me down and shoved grass in my mouth, while I writhed helplessly as she watched. Impotent.

Sixth grade - getting beaten in a singles tennis match at our club by Anita Colona, a girl, a year my junior. I thought I played tennis well. I was crushed. I cried all the way home. Pathetic.

Seventh grade - in a gym lineup of all the new 7th graders, by size of course, I was tail end charlie, smaller then the smallest girl, Shelly Scoggins. My XS gymshorts came to my knees. Loser.

Ninth grade - while working in the school garden over the summer (for brown nose extra credit) I got punched in the face after stepping into a arguement between my friend Tom, and school bully Phil Crone. I backed down and he walked away laughing. Humiliated.

As we get older, our ability to make various sundry excuses and rationalize "non-success" comes much easier: "well, I'll get that promotion next year," "she and I were not really compatible," "I did not really want that job anyway," and the simple but true, "that's life."

We get used to our impotence and incompetence, like water seeking its own level; and therefore being constantly reminded of it does not sting like it did when you are nine-years old. Maybe that's why we switch to sports like golf, where there is no clear winner or loser, its all relative, you play a little better or a little worse each time out. You begin to see things in shades of gray.

As I look at my adult non-successes, like my marriage, some bad stock calls, etc, these things seem more like REAL life; part and parcel to the trials of being an adult. Failure comes naturally the more you do. Its also easy to turn these into some life lesson. Note to self: "Well, XYZ failure was all for the best and what I have learned from this will make me a better person," or some nonsense like that.

This way losers can still be winners! Just like those kids soccer tournaments where we hand out trohpies to everyone for playing...its a self-esteem thing. As though with enough self-esteem we can solve all the world's problems, but I digress...

So has failing to climb Kilimanjaro made me any less a man, or a person, or changed who I am deep down? I don't think so. And at some point along the way I realized that; or I just forgot why I chose to climb that bloody mountain in the first place. Then the sting of turning around and giving up diminished, and the comfort of just being myself took over.

What was I trying to prove to myself for the umpteenth time? I, Michael Seto, who led men in combat on the battlefields of Kuwait, who survived the battlefields of Wall Street, who became a better person through ABC and XYZ failures. What did I have to prove? What DO I have to prove anymore? So I failed to climb Kilimanjaro, so what?

I spent much of my life running blindly from the vampire Failure, lest he drain the life's energy from me and my endeavors, tossing me into a heap of lost souls, the pit of irrelevance. I ran and ran towards the light of success in order to escape the dark abyss lurking below its heights, where one mis-step might cast me.

But each mis-step, each misadventure, however brief, into Failure Hell did not destroy me, or emasculate me. Instead, when I embraced the dark ghoul of failure I found him to be an instructive and wise teacher. One to be cautious of, certainly, but not one to be hysterically fearful of. I realized that he and his twin-brother, success, share a close relationship; and that I cannot have one without the other.

So while I do not seek out Failure's company, when he does arrive unannounced at my door, he is welcomed at my table, for I know he bears wisdom for me; and I should be wont to listen.

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My fear of failure gets the best of me and forces me the remaining way to the top of Kilimanjaro, at 19,340 feet, as the sun rises, seven hours after I set out.