Thoughts On A Summer's Day
It's been warm the past couple of weeks. July and August are like that here in Jacksonville. The wind form the ocean seems to die down as the inland breezes increase in strength, leaving the air of northeast Florida basically stagnant. It's simply hot. The height of summer.
I've had a lot on my mind. I have many interest and hobbies. Since age 12, I've been a modeller. Oh, to be sure, I had built models before then but never with the amount of care I used when I was halfway through my twelth year. My best friend Craig and I were in a silent arms race, on in participation of a "remote control war"; models engaged in miniature combat and sustaining real damage. We lacked the means to go that far, but we at least wanted to hone our skills in plastic.
I started off with an old Aurora model of the USS Nautilus. Craig followed suit with the Skipjack. The model building didn't really follow any set pattern; we were, after all, just children. We'd buy models that were interesting. By the end of spring 1976, with both of us thirteen, the rate of the building picked up, with us motorizing a number of our model ships. For Craig's birthday, my mother bought him a model of the Bismarck, and gifted me with the Tirpitz; sister ships. These were no small models, at over 600cm in length each. And motorized. We spent hours at the pool in the apartment he lived in watching our two German warships circle in the water.
The following year, I began concentrating on making my models look more realistic, with accurate color schemes and markings. I began using sandpaper, putty and emory boards to clean up parts and seams. Craig took notice and began to admire my work (for once).
Just when things were getting really good, his mother died. It was my birthday. The last time I saw Craig was just before Thanksgiving 1977. I wouldn't see him again until June of 1978. My best friend, my achor, was gone.
To ease the pain, I dove into a frenzy of model building. It was the one connection I had to that time. The memories weren't enough. I was trying to hold on to every last feeling of it. My skills improved, but there was no bringing those earlier times back. All the models brought me were a sense of accomplishment. But Craig wasn't coming back. Those earlier times were a memory.
Douglas Hofstadter, in his newest book "I Am A Strange Loop", touches on the idea of being able to recreate segments of someone's "soul" within ourselves. If we understand enough about them, their circumstances and personality, we might be able to program within ourselves small segment of them. It certainly seems a profane idea, to be certain. But there is something attractive about it. It seems actually plausible. Many a person has been kept alive either in the collective conscience of the masses or within the mind of an individual. "Remember me", these ghost seem to be saying, these ghost within us. "Remember me and carry me". Is this a good thing?
Perhaps. I am not equipped to say. It is possible, though, that the pendulum here can swing both ways, between the helpful and the obsessive. It can certainly lead to melancholy (one immediately thinks of Edgar Allen Poe). This I know first hand.
I've done this, and still do. For some reason, I still pick up model airplanes; almost always World War II, almost always 1/72 scale and almost always vintage kits. My techniques haven't changed that much, still prefering the brush to the airbrush. My results aren't bad, they're adequate. It's when I'm engaged in the building the models that I feel that soul of another. He's sitting right there with me, commenting and recommending. He's also trying to get me back on track, to the time before the first of many sorrows would enter my life. There is a reassurance there; "Things really are going to be all right. You'll get through."
The soul I'm trying to recapture is mine, you see. That teenager lives inside of me still. The shy boy who preferred pop and classical to hard rock. The same boy who would spend hours looking up. Still there.
Thirty summers ago, on a summer like this one, my life seemed so full of potential. Most of that vanished in the vacuum of time, lost. Did it? That teenager, in many ways, was more together than I. But he still lives. And he's finally growing up.
I've had a lot on my mind. I have many interest and hobbies. Since age 12, I've been a modeller. Oh, to be sure, I had built models before then but never with the amount of care I used when I was halfway through my twelth year. My best friend Craig and I were in a silent arms race, on in participation of a "remote control war"; models engaged in miniature combat and sustaining real damage. We lacked the means to go that far, but we at least wanted to hone our skills in plastic.
I started off with an old Aurora model of the USS Nautilus. Craig followed suit with the Skipjack. The model building didn't really follow any set pattern; we were, after all, just children. We'd buy models that were interesting. By the end of spring 1976, with both of us thirteen, the rate of the building picked up, with us motorizing a number of our model ships. For Craig's birthday, my mother bought him a model of the Bismarck, and gifted me with the Tirpitz; sister ships. These were no small models, at over 600cm in length each. And motorized. We spent hours at the pool in the apartment he lived in watching our two German warships circle in the water.
The following year, I began concentrating on making my models look more realistic, with accurate color schemes and markings. I began using sandpaper, putty and emory boards to clean up parts and seams. Craig took notice and began to admire my work (for once).
Just when things were getting really good, his mother died. It was my birthday. The last time I saw Craig was just before Thanksgiving 1977. I wouldn't see him again until June of 1978. My best friend, my achor, was gone.
To ease the pain, I dove into a frenzy of model building. It was the one connection I had to that time. The memories weren't enough. I was trying to hold on to every last feeling of it. My skills improved, but there was no bringing those earlier times back. All the models brought me were a sense of accomplishment. But Craig wasn't coming back. Those earlier times were a memory.
Douglas Hofstadter, in his newest book "I Am A Strange Loop", touches on the idea of being able to recreate segments of someone's "soul" within ourselves. If we understand enough about them, their circumstances and personality, we might be able to program within ourselves small segment of them. It certainly seems a profane idea, to be certain. But there is something attractive about it. It seems actually plausible. Many a person has been kept alive either in the collective conscience of the masses or within the mind of an individual. "Remember me", these ghost seem to be saying, these ghost within us. "Remember me and carry me". Is this a good thing?
Perhaps. I am not equipped to say. It is possible, though, that the pendulum here can swing both ways, between the helpful and the obsessive. It can certainly lead to melancholy (one immediately thinks of Edgar Allen Poe). This I know first hand.
I've done this, and still do. For some reason, I still pick up model airplanes; almost always World War II, almost always 1/72 scale and almost always vintage kits. My techniques haven't changed that much, still prefering the brush to the airbrush. My results aren't bad, they're adequate. It's when I'm engaged in the building the models that I feel that soul of another. He's sitting right there with me, commenting and recommending. He's also trying to get me back on track, to the time before the first of many sorrows would enter my life. There is a reassurance there; "Things really are going to be all right. You'll get through."
The soul I'm trying to recapture is mine, you see. That teenager lives inside of me still. The shy boy who preferred pop and classical to hard rock. The same boy who would spend hours looking up. Still there.
Thirty summers ago, on a summer like this one, my life seemed so full of potential. Most of that vanished in the vacuum of time, lost. Did it? That teenager, in many ways, was more together than I. But he still lives. And he's finally growing up.
posted by Robert at 7:49 PM
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