Dear Aliens,

The Pentagon finally revealed what many of us already suspected: that you exist and you've been orbiting our planet for many years. Who knows how many civilian reports of your passage through our cosmos have been real, only to be written off as hallucinations by the close-minded?

I have a few questions right off the bat. Firstly: Why do you choose to approach our planet without saying anything, except to a few suburban teenagers and the occasional rural landowner?

I suppose I should apologize for any attempt you have made to contact any member of our governments. As a species we can be immensely dense, particularly those who occupy our highest offices.

Perhaps you have chosen to ignore us because of our own stupidity. You may be wondering, for example, why some of our citizens are permitted to own fleets of airplanes while others starve. Aliens, there is simply no reason for this beyond our own blind stupidity and selfish inclinations.

Another question: Who are you? Are you David Bowie in his fully mind-blowing incarnation, are you small grey fellows, or are you thought-beings made purely of light? Personally I'll accept you in any form at all, but I ask that if you have the power to heal the human race, please do exercise this ability. At this point, we need the help rather desperately.

We have truly screwed ourselves over. For example, you may be aware that our planet is rapidly speeding towards a climate apocalypse.

I probably don't need to recite the figures to you, but you most likely are already aware that us Earthlings have completely disregarded our habitable planet and each other, instead worshiping a false god of endless profit, creating a precarious tower which is rapidly collapsing over our heads.

In dark times such as these, many of us have always turned to religious, sacred, larger-than-life forces to ask for help. Perhaps that's why so many of us want to believe in you–because, disillusioned with churches and politics, we're seeking meaning in a meaningless world.

But also, when we look at the stars or experience extreme beauty, it's impossible to imagine that there isn't some divine force behind it. When we consider the incredibly delicate spiderweb of events that needed to come together to create this Earth, it seems unfathomable that some greater force isn't pushing all this into being. Shouldn't that something greater still be out there, ready to defend or save or at last unify us? Is it you, and can you help us?

If you are capable, for example, of pulling us into the fray of global consciousness by making us all simultaneously aware of our unity (thereby liberating us from suffering brought on by isolation and the illusion of the self), now seems like a perfect moment for that.

Perhaps it's delusional to request a savior, or maybe this is only a distorted version of praying. Perhaps our greatest delusion is imagining that you are actually out there, or that you would even care to save us.

Most likely, healing will come when we realize that we ourselves were always the aliens we were looking for and that we contain the seeds of our own redemption. But until that day, we — or at least I — will continue to stare at the stars, hoping to find our redemption in that great blue nothingness, or at least in the brief flares that interrupt it.

David Bowie - Starmanwww.youtube.com