Collision

According to the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) at NASA, we are relatively safe from being hit by any large asteroid or comet:

“The most dangerous asteroids, capable of a global disaster, are extremely rare…These bodies impact the Earth only once every 1,000 centuries.  Comets in this size range are thought to impact even less frequently, perhaps once every 5,000 centuries or so.”

Space is just too large.  The void is endless.  There are too many paths for the asteroids and comets to follow.  Zeroing in on planet Earth is (luckily for us) a possibility that is so small, it practically doesn’t even exist.  These massive, destructive bodies go whizzing by us, making “near misses” of our precious planet by distances of hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.  It’s almost as if they are purposefully ignoring our planet, swooping through outer space without any directive other than to miss us.

My older brother, Bryan, is not an asteroid, I am not a comet, and my boss is far from being any sort of space debris.  We are not destructive bodies, at least not on a large scale.  Our paths are neither as fast, nor as aimless as these gigantic space projectiles.  But…the Earth is a large place (in comparison to the size of our bodies)…there are many places we could choose to go.  The chances of the three of us getting together are minute.  Yet, it happened in Seattle.  I was there.  I am one of the three.  I can attest to the miracle of the 3 heavenly bodies colliding together in a gigantic explosive BASH of rock, ice, and a lot of love.

Brother Bryan

My older brother, Bryan, used to live in Seattle.  I remember traveling to the city with my parents and then by myself to meet him and stay with him during the decade he moved from one neighborhood to the next.  Always elusive and mysterious, my family and I had some vague idea of what he was doing, but if someone asked us to write it down on a chalk board, the classroom might just end up looking at a gigantic question mark.  He definitely walks to the beat of his own drummer.  There is no doubt about that.  I’m more likely to receive a postcard or 8 page handwritten letter from him than I am an e-mail.  During one 3 week stretch I received numerous postcards from him, all from different locations:  Mexico, Japan, Seattle, Hong Kong.  The two of us know each other too well.  He is my twin; we just happened to be born 10 years apart.  I look up to him and model my writing after his example.  I think he is brilliant with a pen.  We share a sense of humor and similar outlook on life.  Upon seeing the stream of postcards from different locations I could only assume that he wanted to confuse me, throw me off his trail–like a serial killer playing cat and mouse with Sherlock Holmes.  At one point I received an e-mail from a high school acquaintance of his named Gavin Pinchback who told me that he had brushed shoulders with Bryan while enjoying a hotel breakfast in Kyoto, Japan.  Hot on his trail, I started to put the clues together.  I knew he could not evade me forever.  I would track this metor down at any cost.

Seattle

My boss told me that we would be taking a tour group to Yellowstone National Park in August.  Our first stop would be in Seattle.  We would be there for a day and a half.   Seattle.  SEATTLE!  This was it!  This was the chance I had been waiting for.  I had heard rumors from various family members that there had indeed been Bryan sightings in and around Seattle, and he was currently residing somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, like Bigfoot coming in and out of the city leaving only footprints.  I say “residing” cautiously. The Bryan Stone gathers no moss.  He is constantly on the move and manages to fit himself neatly and snuggly into just about any nook or cranny, disappearing from site like a phantom on Halloween night.  I took my chance and sent numerous e-mails to him, hoping for a response.  I told him the plan, that I would be in Seattle with 15 Chinese travelers, and it would be ideal if we could arrange a meeting, even if for a few hours.  At first there was no response to my e-mail, but I wasn’t surprised by this.  He was off in the wilderness for sure, out of tune with the world wide web, working on his writing or for the CIA (I’m still not sure which).  Surely, one day he would catch wind that I was e-mailing him.  The Bryan Stone is resourceful.  Surely, one day he would respond…and he did!

“Seattle sounds good.  I am there now (or close by).”  There were other things said in the e-mail, but this was all I needed to know.  Bryan was in the Seattle vicinity.  I prepared my lasso, now confident that I could rope up the most elusive of shooting stars.

World’s Collide on Queen Anne

After arriving in Seattle, meeting our local Chinese tour guides, and eating our local Chinese cuisine, we headed out past the Space Needle towards the strip mall area where we would be staying in a Holiday Inn Select hotel.  Despite not being the classiest of areas, everyone had a comfortable room with a nice bed.  Immediately after entering the room, I called the cellphone number where Bryan could be reached.  He picked up.  Flashes of the ensuing collision went through my imagination.  It was going to happen!  I told him of our plan to meet on Queen Anne in a small park that overlooks the city, the Sound, the Space Needle, and off into the distance, the ominous Mt. Ranier.  He agreed.  We hung up. 

After all the guests were washed up, getting the airplane smell and jetlag feeling off of their bodies, we piled into the large van that would take us to one of Seattle’s most beautiful urban spots of Queen Anne.  Some of the city’s nicest houses are there, and the passengers in the car “oooohed” and “ahhhhhhed” as we passed the spic-and-span colorfully painted houses with large gardens in front of them.  Upon arriving at the top of Queen Anne, we walked through the “open garden” of one of the houses.  The air wasn’t as crisp as it could have been, but still worlds apart from Beijing smog.  Off in the distance, I could smell the smell of a barbecue, giving me pangs of memories in Portland, Oregon where I loved to barbecue time and time again (sometimes loading up the grill with charcoal only to make one burger for yours truly).  We walked along the street towards the small park where I was to meet Bryan.  I have a picture that my mother took of the three brothers in that park:  Bryan, the eldest, myself, the middle one, and Jonny, the youngest.  But…am I remembering it wrong?  Was it my father, Jonny, and me in the picture?  I can’t remember clearly.  I need to be refreshed.  The meteors need to collide.  Worlds need to come together.

And there he was.  Leaning against the railing overlooking the city was Brother Bryan, waiting for us.  I walked up to him and poked him on the shoulder.  We embraced.

“Brotherrrrrrrr!” We both said at the same time.  The chances of this meeting are so slim.

Even slimmer than the chances of us meeting on Queen Anne while I’m in Seattle for a day and a half are the chances of my friend and boss, Zhao Jing, meeting with Bryan on Queen Anne.  But he was there, too.  And this is one of my favorite things in the world.  I love it when this type of collision happens:  two bodies that have nothing to do with each other, other than the fact that they share a connection of ME, meet and talk with one another.  To me, this was already the highlight of the trip–watching Brother Bryan and Zhao Jing talk with each other, trying to figure one another out at the top of Queen Anne.  For a period of about 20 minutes the worlds collided in a once and 1,000 year chance miracle.