Artemis II is about to take us back to the moon, where as noted by Buzz Aldrin in his 1974 memoir, Return to Earth, there is a starkness of shadows and the unusually brilliant white, a contrasting white like no white I had ever seen.

Upon returning home, Aldrin wrote, When I wasn’t in bed, I sat staring at the television set. If a man reflects at all, it is usually near the end of his life. and it happens only because there is little else to do. My depression forced me to stop and, for the first time, examine my life.

Examine my life? What’s that? Do I just close my eyes and think deeper? Or clean my thoughts and think not at all. All or nothing?

Red or black, 11 or 21, everything on that, plain and simple. Forget the lies and compromise. Ditch the morons. Ignorance and fury out the back. One more drink and get that number, Artemis II. 500 on magnificent desolation.