Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong's death has left me unsettled.
I don't know why.
Sometimes people are in your life, in your mind, without you really being aware of it.
The man walked on the moon in 1969. I was fifteen. It was the end of an amazing decade. A decade I entered at the age of 6.
A decade whose spirit I absorbed, a spirit that still occupies a large portion of my soul today, but a decade that I barely missed out on experiencing in any meaningful way. I was always just behind the curve age-wise.
I was more caught up in the music and the rebellion than in science, but sending men to the moon was a hard achievement to ignore. And walking on the moon? How amazingly romantic, unbelievable, impressive and mind blowing was that?
Still I don't remember dwelling on it. I'm sure I immediately got back to smoking pot and drinking beer and dreaming about all the ways my life would be dramatic and different from the norm. All the ways that never materialized. All the dreams I abandoned.
Space flight became common place, which is ridiculous. But it happened so often that we became indifferent to it.
I have not walked around since 1969 consciously thinking what a cool dude Neil Armstrong was. I have not followed his life. Don't know much about him.
But when he died I was thrown off balance. Almost like the first guy to walk on the moon should be immortal. Like he should get some special dispensation from life's orchestrator allowing him to live forever.
He is described in Time magazine's remembrance as a man "who had carried himself with such silent grace for so many years." I consider that high praise.
He could have gone off the deep end. The first man to walk on the moon, for Christ sake. He could have commanded people to bow before him, could have his dinner served to him on solid gold platters, could have grown shoulder length hair and spent his life partying in Ibiza with shallow women twenty years younger and an eternity less intelligent than him.
According to Time he was a deeply private man who at some point stopped signing autographs because it forced him to compromise his personality and because people would turn around and sell them, which bothered him.
A deeply principled man.
He flew seventy eight combat missions over Korea, commanded the flight of Gemini 8 in 1966 which almost ended in disaster but which he saved through steely cool.
And he commanded Apollo 11's flight to the moon.
And took a stroll.
Inside the front cover of this issue of Time is a Louis Vuitton ad featuring a photo of Muhammad Ali, and a little boy wearing boxing gloves.
The caption says "Some stars show you the way. Muhammad Ali and a rising star. Phoenix, Arizona."
I stopped short when I opened the magazine.
I worship Muhammad Ali. As a man even more than as a fighter. Actually as I write that it occurs to me that calling him a fighter covers it all.
Of course Muhammad came to prominence in the sixties.
After reading Neil Armstrong's remembrance I thought maybe my reaction is all caught up in that whole sixties thing.
It was a powerful decade. One whose seismic shifts will never be repeated.
I am proud to have lived it.
Another chapter has closed on that period but the vibe will never die.
And given his enormous impact on the world and the graceful way he handled it, neither will Neil Armstrong.