Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.
Leonard Nimoy, Spock, is dead.
The deaths of celebrities don't usually make a dent in my life. I'm surprised when people get worked up about the passing of a movie star or performer. But Spock hit me. And, though twitter usually holds no interest for me, his last tweet was powerful to me:
My earliest memories, apart from times with my family and some instances at school that have been recounted by my parents, are of Star Trek reruns. I planned my life at home around watching the reruns, to the frustration of my parents, who would shake their heads muttering Spock, Klink, and 99 (I also loved Hogan's Heroes and Get Smart reruns). I created an Auxiliary Control Room in my bedroom, cutting out communicators, phasers, and control panels out of construction paper and placing them at angles on my desk. My tricorder was a broken handheld transistor radio in one of those old leather cases with a little strap, with a screen readout taped over the radio dial. I recreated episodes by myself in there, launching photon torpedoes, activating warp drive, scanning planet surfaces.
Spock was, in his words, fascinating. And though the original series' movie reunions of the crew resembled a resident skit at a retirement home, his appearance in the new movies as a much older man mirrored his life, so one could watch an old episode and see the new movies and witness a life, much like Linklater's Boyhood.
But the words were what got the water works going. I have had perfect moments, fortunately or unfortunately not captured on camera (somehow the color is better in memory than in a picture). Some have been making music, some have been outdoors, some with my wife, some with friends, some with strangers. I can see them, hear them, remember the feelings that they summoned. As Steinbeck mentions in Travels with Charlie, they tend to be at night.
The deaths of celebrities don't usually make a dent in my life. I'm surprised when people get worked up about the passing of a movie star or performer. But Spock hit me. And, though twitter usually holds no interest for me, his last tweet was powerful to me:
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memoryThose words brought tears to my eyes. Partially for his passing. Partially for the simple truth the sentence carried.
My earliest memories, apart from times with my family and some instances at school that have been recounted by my parents, are of Star Trek reruns. I planned my life at home around watching the reruns, to the frustration of my parents, who would shake their heads muttering Spock, Klink, and 99 (I also loved Hogan's Heroes and Get Smart reruns). I created an Auxiliary Control Room in my bedroom, cutting out communicators, phasers, and control panels out of construction paper and placing them at angles on my desk. My tricorder was a broken handheld transistor radio in one of those old leather cases with a little strap, with a screen readout taped over the radio dial. I recreated episodes by myself in there, launching photon torpedoes, activating warp drive, scanning planet surfaces.
Spock was, in his words, fascinating. And though the original series' movie reunions of the crew resembled a resident skit at a retirement home, his appearance in the new movies as a much older man mirrored his life, so one could watch an old episode and see the new movies and witness a life, much like Linklater's Boyhood.
But the words were what got the water works going. I have had perfect moments, fortunately or unfortunately not captured on camera (somehow the color is better in memory than in a picture). Some have been making music, some have been outdoors, some with my wife, some with friends, some with strangers. I can see them, hear them, remember the feelings that they summoned. As Steinbeck mentions in Travels with Charlie, they tend to be at night.
- Hearing wolves howl in the night while laying in a tent with Robin in Yellowstone
- Looking out to sea from the Cliffs of Moher twenty years ago
- Eating chole in a roadside dhaba in the wee hours of the morning riding the bus from Manali to Delhi with a New Zealander a dozen years ago
- Hiking in the woods with Maxie the dog and Robin the day after we got married, with a wedding veil pinned to the back of Robin's hiking hat.
- Eating a cinnamon bun in a bakery in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem, with the bakery cat watching, late one night a dozen years ago
- Hopping up and down while watching the sunset from within the Grand Canyon the first time I hiked down
- Robin trying to find me at Iota when Last Train Home started playing "Donut Girl"
- Hearing Ray Charles segue simply into a spine-tingling rendition of "Georgia on my mind" outside one summer evening
- Watching and hearing the Kirov Orchestra play Mahler 9 from the chorister seats
- Hearing the slow movement of Brahms 2nd piano concerto for the first time in Philadelphia
Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.Finally posting this weeks after I wrote it. Live long and prosper folks.
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