The Spaceship In My Backyard

Oh, what I can learn. A seminar on meditation last night brought dreams of expeditions. In my father’s backyard an immense spaceship stood there, while people busily moved about, conversed, sat and relaxed with one another. I was part of it because it took place in my backyard, but aside from having a strange man for a neighbor, who always gave me a broad smile (which didn’t please his wife, naturally, but over which he had no control) and who had tried, one way or another, once traveling through a tunnel, to reach me, and my children and another little, dark child, a boy, whom I watched but not very carefully, I hadn’t a clue as to what was going on. The vehicle dominated the scene, I couldn’t – I was awed by its size, and I wanted to go wherever it was going. In the crowd, I spotted Carl Sagan, sitting in a chair next to Mr. Einstein. Indeed the crowd was filled with scientists.
I went into the house briefly – to get something – and when I came out, the yard was almost empty. The spaceship had gone and so had those who bustled about. Mr. Einstein, however, stayed behind, still sitting in the chair. Again, I was awed, bewildered. I approached him and he was extremely friendly – He said he would stay and keep me company. How sweet, I thought. How lucky for me. Then he added: “I will stay for five days with you.” Five days? “But, Mr. Einstein, one night would have been more than enough.”
Mr. Einstein, it turns out, knew the man with the broad smile, but he was very rude to him, dismissing him abruptly – there was an attraction between that other man and myself, and Mr. Einstein managed to distract me from an awkward situation.
“I know nothing about science,” I said.
But this did not concern him, for there were many ways to think about science, he said, and he pulled a violin from its case, and began to play it. And though I would have preferred to be a passenger on that spaceship, I traveled as far as I could, while sitting in a chair.