The Universe is a Blank Slate

On the black hemisphere, Cassini Regio, the bulge bisects an area where people once upon a time went out in hoppers or rovers and blew the black dust away to make patterns out of exposed white ice. Anytime you can easily make such a contrast in the landscape, people have written out their thoughts for the universe to read. Before the Saturn League was formed, when the first arrivals from Mars had come for Titan’s nitrogen, and were exploring the other moons as well for whatever else might be plundered and taken back to the red planet, people had come here and etched white out of the black. An exhalation no stronger than a leaf blower’s would do the job, and soon great fields of Cassini Regio were covered like Newspaper Rock with petroglyphs. There were white-on-black figures in abstract patterns, beasts, stick people, Kokopellis, writing in many different alphabets, portraits, landscape features, trees and other plants; on and on it went. Later some entire areas were cleared completely to white and then painted with collected black dust to a greater or lesser depth, achieving shadings that had a sometimes trompe l’oeil depth of field, proportioned for viewing such that they looked normal when viewed from the bulge, with others designed to be viewed from space.

Graffiti on Iapetus! Later it was declared a mistake and a scandal, a moral stupidity, even a crime, in any case disgusting; and there were calls for the entirety of Cassini Regio to be reblacked. Someday it may happen, but don’t hold your breath, for the truth is we are here to inscribe ourselves on the universe, and it is not inappropriate to remind ourselves of this when blank slates are given us. All landscape art reminds us: we live in a tabula rasa, and must write on it. It is our world, and its beauty is entirely inside our heads. Even today people will sometimes go out over the horizon and scuff their initials in the dust.

For us to write upon, and we do.