retrospectacle

I suppose it's normal to remember the first and the most recent things around a person, or setting, and forget what happens in between. Maybe that's why in the past week or so I've found myself idly going through old emails and pictures involving Joe and re-discovering bits of the past 8 years since I first met him. MonkeyDepartment games (including SuperCosmic Radio, which I still think was and is an awesome idea). 80's cover songs featuring accordians and acoustic guitars - or banjos. Beer. More beer. Robotic Mindstorm legos, and midnight trips to Target for more parts. Late nights and dark-sky trips with telescopes, which brings me back to one of the first times that we met, when we wandered back to my house and brought out the telescope and looked at planets from the front yard.

For the most part, though, I'm finding myself thinking about the past year, and trying to remind myself that it's existed, in between last spring's health crisis and now. Random karaoke moments from Austin Karaoke and Common Interest. Scrabble games. Various get-togethers involving 700 kinds of sausage or food masquerading as non-food items (Lileks would be proud). Part of me still misses the days back when we'd stay up all night playing Starcraft, five or six nights a week (fortunately, I had a couple of jobs in those years where showing up on time in the mornings wasn't particularly important.)

Probably the last long conversation I had with Joe was earlier this year, right before Chris and I got married, when he called and we went on a long internet scavenger hunt trying to track down a particular Star Wars script that had been translated and retranslated into gibberish. It disappeared off the net about five years ago, so all we had to work from was a few half-remembered phrases such as "I find your lack of sturgeons of the belief" and "you play the horn beep". (We did, I'm proud to say, track down the elusive quarry. Its archived form is here, thanks to the wayback machine.)

Sometime around then, I remember him pointing out that he wasn't sure if he'd be able to make it to our wedding, with his treatment schedule. Turns out, of course, that he was able to be there; I was actually standing next to my boss when Joe and Jenn went up on stage and sang Muskrat Love, which prompted a wonderfully unusual and slightly awkward "is that what I think it is?" moment. Perfect.

Part of me keeps thinking about all the things I'm going to miss doing and talking about. A big part of me, though, is glad that knowing Joe never turned into a "what if it's the last time?" thing - as far as I ever saw, he approached everything he did with fascination, and as if he had all the time in the world for it. That's all I could hope for, and it's a skill I'm still trying to learn from him.

Much love.