The Enterprise

After two and half weeks, I return to the trek. Let me first apologize, as I know you all sit around on Mondays waiting with baited breath for my newest blog. For those of you who don’t know me, that was sarcasm. To be honest, in the past few weeks I almost quit. Partially because I watched Star Trek: Enterprise for the first time and it made the Enterprise seem like the ill-fated Titanic. And partially because between two jobs and graduate school, finding time to sit down and write to you folks is difficult. But in the end I decided that I love to write and my primary objective has yet to be accomplished. That is, to find connections between my passion, Star Trek, and my life (i.e. reality).

I watched Seasons 1-4ish (emphasis on “ish”) of Star Trek: Enterprise. Thank you, Hulu. It was a painful, trying experience. Like watching the ball glide over your goalkeeper’s hands in the WAC final in the last 30 seconds of overtime and knowing your athletic career had come to a dismal and abrupt end. But that’s another story. So, today, I figure I’d write to you about Star Trek. Not the episodes. Not the people. Not even the cool ships. But that which makes Star Trek, Star Trek.

1. Honor. For whatever reason, this term doesn’t come up seriously in every day life. At KS, we had an “Honor Code”—but I’m fairly certain that meant “I promise not to cheat on quizzes.” Star Trek has defined honor for me and it has become a code by which I live my life. The Klingons have a saying: Death before dishonor. While quirky, this is actually how I feel. This is why Star Trek: Enterprise was such an abysmal failure—it did not adhere to this code. It featured questionable ethical and moral decisions and failed in every way to meet the cliché. When I turn on Star Trek, I expect to see the ideal, if I wanted to watch people make questionable moral and ethical decisions, I’d turn on the news.

2. Exploration. For the non-Trekkies among us, ST’s primary concern is exploration. Of humanity. Of space. While space may be the final frontier, ST continually explores the only frontier that is ever-changing: humanity. Ever ask yourself what it means to be human? Many think that writers write because we are pompous and think we “know” what we are talking about. In truth, we writers write because we don’t know. Our writing is our exploration of ourselves, of our humanity. As much as I would love to explore space, I doubt it will ever be possible. First, because I succumb to motion sickness and would most likely vomit before I reached the transporter room doors. Second, because I could spend my entire life exploring my humanity and that still wouldn’t be enough time.

3. Questions & Answers. Great literature always leaves me with more questions than answers. ST is no different. Both mega-texts (literature and ST) ask the most important questions: Why are we here? What is life? What are we supposed to do? Each of us, I suppose, explores these questions in our own way. ST is set in the 24^th century, three hundred years in the future. Humanity has evolved past World Wars, past greed, and finds itself with room to grow and expand. They deal in the none-trivial. You see, once we brush aside our unpaid bills, our two jobs, our faceplace updates, our graduate school readings that are yet unread, we can begin thinking of the bigger questions. ST isn’t about finding answers to these questions, rather knowing these questions are important, exploring the questions from different angles, and understanding that there is no one answer—that is the crux. And each time I watch an episode, I’m reminded of what is important and what is not.

4. Difference. People don’t deal well with difference. See: slavery, women’s suffrage, gay rights, the Civil War, the Nazis, World War I & II, the Republican party, some organized religions, present-day terrorists…The list goes on and on. It’s incredible to me that we can’t deal with difference. We segregate, separate, and subjugate minorities. We expect other people to look like us, act like us, talk like us and when they don’t, we fear them. And because of our fear, we push them down. We limit their rights. We judge them. In ST, difference is celebrated and explored. We are introduced to aliens, not just the green, bulbous head guys, but non-corporeal aliens. Aliens that exist in different dimensions, different realms, outside of space and time. And in the Trek universe, not only are we aware of them, but we learn to work with them, understand them, and hopefully form a friendship. Difference is merely the unknown. Explore it. Celebrate it. Learn from it. These are ST’s greatest points.

5. Imagination. Finally, the best of the best of ST. “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. It’s continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Right at the start, I knew this show was going to push the limits of imagination. I knew I could see and experience that which is otherwise impossible. Star Trek is less about space and more about us (in case you’re just tuning in now). It asks: what can you imagine? And where can you go? I’ve found these questions useful as a writer and as a kid trapped in a 27-year old body. Could it be possible that if we can imagine it, we can achieve it? That someone, say Gene Rodenberry, thought, if I can imagine a space ship exploring the galaxy, might it one day lead to men and women exploring space? If such exploration were possible, perhaps it might mean humanity was finally able to set aside trivial differences and unimportant questions, and adhere to a code of being that defined us as a people. That we could finally focus on the important questions and set about, for once, improving ourselves as individuals and as a people. Hmm. Imagine that.

Next week’s episode: Voyager’s “Infinite Regress.”

Close hailing frequencies.

Someone to Watch Over Me

References: "Someone to Watch Over Me," a song from a 1926 musical Oh, Kay! written by George and Ira Gershwin. The song has been used numerous times in television shows, musicals, and is included in the Great American Songbook.

In this episode of Voyager, love is in the life support system. Seven, a rescued Borg drone who is more Borg than human conducts a study of our capacity to love and be loved. She is helped by the Doctor, a hologram (essentially, he is made up of photons and force fields--a projection of life)--thus, we have a blind leading a blind. At 27, the topic of love comes up frequently, particularly in after hour conversations over a pitcher of beer at a dive bar. This episode is a reminder that even in the 24th century, love is at best as difficult to grasp as a time paradox.

I won’t succumb to the diatribe I prepared, but with all this talk of equal rights and love and protest, I feel it necessary to point out the Doctor’s predicament. He is in love with Seven. Strange, huh, for a hologram to love a former-Borg-turned-human? It’s funny and strange that we believe love must fit into certain boundaries, that there are guidelines and criteria two people must meet for society to qualify their feelings as love (see eharmony or marriage in general). Only in a Star Trek can we see good come out of difference. Though he doesn’t have the courage to admit his feelings to Seven, he leaves us with a reminder: “Won’t you tell her to put on some speed? Oh, how I need someone to watch over me.” Even in the 24^th century, as a lonely hologram sits at a piano humming a century old tune, we all understand his predicament. Whether we’re brown or white, male or female, Bolian or Vulcan, we all need someone to watch over us.

For this blog, I could spill my guts to all ten of you and tell you what I think of the subject at hand. But then I thought that might be boring, or worse, preachy. So let me share instead a few poems on the subject and I'll leave this topic in your capable hands to work out.

Firefly

I always believed in you.

When you asked

about my firefly collection

sitting on the shelf,

I told you quietly

I could hear them breathe.

Illuminating the shadows in my room,

pulsating in rhythm to the beat

of your heart I held so,

just so, in my hands

You said, forever.

I replied, always.

At dawn I sat at your side,

as you dreamt a dreamer’s dream.

Free from the abscess of our love,

and you never told me why.

The jar hummed in place,

looking down on this scene.

The glow fading in twilight.

A sole firefly remained,

and as it spiraled to join its dead

your heart turned in my hands.

And I awoke alone,

the bed still warm,

and the room now dark.

After a Heavy Rain

This is how I thought it’d be:

your ring on the nightstand,

the warmth of your fingers

fading from the silver.

Small pieces of poems scattered about,

wrinkled in with the sheets, left

on the kitchen tiles,

like the droplets flecked careless

onto the porch

after a heavy rain,

drying in the afternoon sun.