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Archive for November, 2005

Nov 26

Lost in Adulthood

“I’m stuck. Does it get easier? No. Yes. It gets easier. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you. Yeah. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be. You know? I tried being a writer, but… I hate what I write. What about marriage? Does that get easier? That’s hard. We used to have a lot of fun.”

Sometimes we need help growing up … help realizing that life isn’t going to be what we thought it would be. At the end of Lost in Translation, Bob whispers to Charlotte, “As soon as possible, call your husband and tell him you love him, okay?”

Nov 20

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Cosmos 25th Anniversary

When Carl Sagan died, one of my heroes was lost. After a two year battle with bone marrow cancer, Sagan died at age 62. His influence on my generation is hard to measure. As a kid, I remember Cosmos coming on PBS for the first time. I begged my parents to let me stay up late and I watched every episode. At night I dreamed of going to the places that his starship of the imagination went – off to distant places, light years away.

Sagan’s dream was to go to the stars. He believed it was humanity’s inescapable destiny to leave the Earth and travel to the stars. Sagan recognized that our world changed when the Apollo astronauts snapped the first picture of our planet from the surface of the moon. However, even though our destiny may be to escape the gravity of our home world, Sagan warned that a much different, much darker destiny may await us, as well. He remained cautiously optimistic about our future. Read more

Nov 18

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The Powerful Play

What would it be like to not exist? A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a friend. She was making fun of me and I was making fun of her. We laughed and talked about music and movies. Today she is in a Ziploc bag on the bookshelf. But, where is she really?

I’ve always been confident that life goes on and that dying must be like falling asleep and dreaming. Even that small bit of continuity has always given me a sense of peace about death that some part of life as we have previously experienced it, will continue. The thought occurred to me today that I could be wrong. What if even my most fundamental assumption about death is wrong? What if death really is the end and just as you didn’t exist before birth, you also cease to exist after death? It’s no wonder that Walt Whitman said that, “the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Was Walt thinking this same thought over 100 years ago?

Some versions of this poem on the internet change the word “may” to “will”. Which is a major misreading of the poem. The endless trains of the faithless will probably not contribute much to the “powerful play.” Not everyone contributes … or, as William Wallace said in Braveheart, “every man dies, not every man really lives.” Will I really die? Have I really lived?

Nov 8

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Champagne Supernova In the Sky

Even though I decided a long time ago that I would not live to see my 30th birthday, I just had my 33rd birthday. So biologically, I’ve made it. Spiritually, I can’t say the same. I think my life ended at 29. It’s only now as I wake up to the wreckage that I’ve left in my wake that I have begun to notice. The lyrics from Champagne Supernova put it so well: “But you and I, we live and die. The world’s still spinning round – we don’t know why.”

Carl Sagan liked to talk about how we are all “star stuff.” I can’t imagine anything more amazing than being connected to the universe in such a tangible way. When I look into the night sky I see all that was and all that will ever be. I can’t imagine how radically different life after death could be. I think our brains are just not up to the task. Like the song says, we don’t even know why the world spins. I think some day you will find me caught beneath the landslide, in a champagne supernova in the sky.