I am going to Cornwall this summer with my boyfriend to visit the Eden Project. The Eden Project, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a bunch of huge greenhouses in the south-west of England shaped like huge domes. Each individual window in the curved structure is octagonal. In short the greenhouses look like the eye of a fly enlarged 1,000 times.

Not only have we wanted to go for years we actually feel like we have strong arguments for going:

1)     In our thirteen years together we have never been on a vacation abroad alone.

2)     We have spent enough hours in the past five or six summers mucking about with soil, water, mud, sand, seeds and fertilizer in all possible combinations to claim that we have a genuine interest in gardening.

I feel that our arguments are strong enough to convince anyone that we are not the flippant type, the type of people who do things such as visit places or change their self-image at a whim. Having your arguments straight is important in an ex-Lutheran country like Sweden.

What my boyfriend is completely unaware of is that for me, visiting the Eden Project, as fun as it will be, will be a poor substitute for something else. In fact visiting the Eden Project is at the end of a substituting chain which grows progressively weaker the further it gets from the real thing. The chain goes like this:

• Visiting the Eden Project is a substitute for visiting Biosphere 2 in Arizona, the site of the two brilliant, nutcase, or both, projects in the 1990’s where a number of people sealed themselves into a closed ecological system for an extended length of time to perform experiments on “system metabolism, hydrologic balance, heat and humidity, rainforest, mangrove, ocean, and agronomic system development in carbon dioxide-rich environment”. What the participants forgot was that they were in experimenting on themselves as well.
• Visiting Biosphere 2, of course,  would be a poor substitute for participating in the Biosphere 2 projects. The actual project participants, who suffered some brain damage due to deficient oxygen levels, ended up fighting each other and sabotaging each others’ work. None of them could have been an avid Science Fiction reader. I would NEVER have forgotten to take into account lessons learned from “confined enviroment psychology” into the project planning stages, gathered from sources like scientists overwintering in Antarctic research stations. Or, as it were, readily available in almost any Sci-Fi pocket book.
• Finally, participating in the Biosphere 2 projects, for me, would be a poor substitute for living in a closed ecological system due to necessity rather than as an experiment, such as at the bottom of the sea or maybe on Mars, aka “the real thing”.

In simple terms, my craving for living out space scenarios in the here and now is way way under-realized. In my life I have only come across two space station playmates. Both were male. Both were extremely intelligent. Both had the same size feet and were the same height. Both had the same middle name. Both were married. Complications are unavoidable when your or your space station playmate’s partner is not space ship crew material. All space stations I have lived on have had some type of polygamy arrangements.  

One of the persons I have hated most in Stockholm is a man who plays the balalaika in a long pedestrian tunnel which goes through a hill in the center of the city. The tunnel is long, with a curved ceiling. Two steps in I am already wearing a unisuit, and walking briskly from one part of the space station to another. Some important business is afoot. The whole space station may be at peril. But we are going to set it right. Or we would, if the stupid balalaika player wasn’t sitting at the middle of the tunnel like a big cork strumming his stupid tunes that no one wants to hear anyway. The strumming can be heard exactly along the entire 250 yards of the tunnel. “He sits there every single day, can you imagine?”, I complained to the first of my two space crew colleagues the only time we walked the tunnel together. “I can’t keep the vision of the space station up for longer than ten yards because of him!” My friend stared at me. One of the most intense looks of love I have ever gotten in my life.  People applying for MY space ship will be screened closely. They will be asked ever so innocently about their musical talents. People who can play the balalaika are ruled out.

My boyfriend is not space ship crew material. He is more of an earthling type. While we will have a grand old time in Cornwall some of the sights we see we will experience differently.