Live Long and Prosper

Sir Patrick Stewart has been talking me through my hysterectomy preparations.

We walk each day as the sun begins to set - the dog alternately walking and stopping to sniff intently and Sir Patrick reading me his life story.

I would not identify as a “trekkie” any more than I would identify as a Catholic, although both are useful as adjectives to my noun. Bodies of work whose bank of stories have colored the lenses with which I see the world.

Additionally, I don’t know that I’d recommend either for the uninitiated, but both create connection points for other forty-something travelers on this planet. The origin story of Star Trek might be capitalistic (it was a very successful TV series), but I like to think of it as idealistic. A group of unlikely fellows of all genders and colors and backgrounds and species cleverly placed to disrupt tacit cultural norms (more so in Stewart’s incarnation than Shatner’s). The plot and story less important than the resounding cultural willingness to consider what might be possible if we were neighborly rather than extractive. If we let a teenager steer the ship, or a woman be a doctor, or a blind man navigate.

Through space.

That’s the shit that gets my goat.

That, and my favorite character from the OG series Spock. Never have I ever related to another character more. A being torn between logic and emotion. Two halves that exist more often in paradox than in parallel.

Two wolves.