60 Years

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The two saddest photographs in my memory both commemorate a tragic historical event that might not have happened, an alternate reality: a daylight photo of an iceberg with a streak of dark paint along its waterline that was seen from the deck of one of the ocean liners that rescued survivors the day after the Titanic sank. The other is a photo of the presidential limo in which President Kennedy lost his life earlier that day, but with its bulletproof top installed. It was about to be loaded on the plane back to Washington, DC.

It was a sunny day in Dallas sixty years ago today, so the top was deemed unnecessary for a brief parade across the city. I saw a presidential motorcade once myself, in 2004. It was a sunny day in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that day, too, but there were no convertibles to be seen. The specific route was not published; the city block I lived on included the arena at which President Bush was to hold a campaign event, so streets near my apartment building were blocked with large equipment.

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Cesium and Desistium

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Dr. Oliver Sacks gave me a gift for my birthday some years ago: a writing prompt that I use each year for my special-ish day: Write an essay in which you equate your age with the corresponding element number on the periodic table.

Since I am a nonscientist, this seemed like an invitation to a find a metaphor in a reflection of the year past and in one’s hopes for the year to come.

Today, November 18, 2023, I am 55. A Scorpio, whatever that means. A dear friend composed my birth chart a couple years ago and informed me that I am a “double Scorpio,” which sounds neat and intense, and my ego-driven side (in other words, all of me) hopes that this makes me sound mysterious and sexy, but it just means that both the sun and moon were in the same sign at the moment of my debut on life’s stage. To my non-astrology believing ears it just sounds like “double thing I double don’t believe in.” The periodic table as the source for an annual metaphor about one’s age, though? I fully endorse this exercise.
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Kyiv/Minsk, 1989; Grief, Today

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

We almost died in Kyiv. It’s a funny anecdote, but as a person who has since experienced some moments in which my mortality pointed finger-guns at me and said, “Catch you later,” I know now how valid my opening sentence remains. Sometimes one’s present and future existence depends on the reflexes of a cab driver in a foreign city.

I love Kyiv, perhaps because I experienced one of my first glimpses of my own mortality there, and thus experienced my own love of life for one of the first times as an adult. I love Kyiv because it’s a beautiful city, and my memory of it is full of music. It is a treasured place in memory.
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