Sparkle of Thoughts: Nostalgic Disencounters: Tribute to Carl Sagan

Our life is a set of fortuitous encounters and disencounters, many times because of spatial issues and other times because of timing issues. People who will influence our lives in a significant way will be born only in ten years from now, while others have already died a decade ago.

I'm a movie maniac. In one of my walkings by the movie rental stores, in the ending 2004, I met the astronomer Carl Sagan. Unhappily it wasn't a meeting face to face where I could have shacked his hand, because beyond he have never lived in the city where I live or have never gone to the same stores that I do, he had already died some years ago. To tell the truth, I not even knew who he was. At the time, a mere stranger. So much that what attracted me initially was not his person, but his work.

There was a movie rental store close to my house that was through a modernization process. I explain it better: it was getting rid of all its VHS tapes and replacing them gradually for DVDs. And this replacement was made by selling all its VHS tapes in a banana price and consequently purchasing DVDs. Any one who wanted could have at home, at low costs, the most varied movie titles since children movies, action films, fiction and also documentary films, but all this in the old and obsolete VHS technology. The size of such a tape is not very appropriate to keep itself in a house, but the price was very attractive. If I'm not wrong, they had some titles that cost R$ 10,00 (US$ 5.00) and others R$ 5,00 (US$ 2.50). All the movie rental stores of the city were making this and by the end the price lowered until R$ 1,00 (US$ 0.50).

Running my eyes through the shelves in the search to buy some famous title, I saw something that suddenly got my attention. A series called "Cosmos" lined in a forgotten corner of the store. There were several tapes and each one of them with an episode of the series. I had never heard about that series. I gave a look in a disinterested manner and I read some synopses. I saw that it was on astronomy and that had been produced almost 25 years earlier, in the early 1980's, by some guy named Carl Sagan. Since I loved material about the universe and the price was good, I ended up choosing an episode that I thought would be interesting and I bought it. I caught "Episode 9 - Lives of the Stars - Birth, Life and Death of the Stars.". Arriving home I put it with my other movies, so I could watch it later.

At home we had a new DVD device and an old VCR. The preference always was the DVD and it was connected in the television continuously. At this time the movie rentals still had titles well distributed between VHS and DVD, but as the DVD stealed the market, hardly we rented a movie in VHS. Then I thought that when it would be the case to disconnect the DVD and to connect the VCR, I could watch that documentary.

Some three or four months later, having ignored completely in this interval of time the existence of that "Cosmos" tape that I had bought, we rented a movie in VHS. Then, in a lazy Saturday afternoon, since the VCR was already connected to the television, I decided to give a chance to "Episode 9". While my beloved wife, Ana, slept in the bed, I, lying by her side, watched that old dusty VHS.

The opening of the episode started with the phrase: " Cosmos - A Personal Voyage" in the sound of a pretty and tranquilizing musical symphony. The first phrase of the episode impressed me very much: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe.". It was a documentary on the birth and death of the stars and it explained how the atoms were formed and how exists a connection between all things. It had the approximate duration of 50 minutes. The narrator and presenter were the author himself, Carl Sagan.

With all his poetry and well understandable explanations that are characteristic to him, Carl made my attention and excitement increase more and more and my eyes looked at that wonderful universe of knowledge. And the enthusiasm, with which he presented, was contagious. To describe what happened with me, I use an expression that I listened from a dear friend: "Mind Blowing Experience". It was a true experience that blew up my mind, literally.

Since then it's been as if it had lighted up a flame inside me so that I really realized how interesting, intricate and magnificent is our universe. And how stimulating it is to study and to learn about it. We could even describe this as a "religious" feeling, in certain way. In the words of Albert Einstein: "If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.".

Then, having seen that wonderful documentary with its obsolete and coarse computerized animations from the 1980's (but it didn't made the material less interesting), I was crazy to come back to that movie rental store and buy the missing episodes. In the following day, I got my car and went to that store. Arriving there, with some months delay, I saw that the VHS supply was declining and almost in the end. I went to that shelf, but there were not the other tapes. Probably other science lovers had already took all the works of the Dr. Sagan. I even looked for it in the other remaining shelves. Perhaps, who knows, there was some "Cosmos" episode forgotten between "Die Hard" and "Terminator". I looked in vain. I even tried to ask to the store clerk if he knew about some remote vestige of that stupendous series. He didn't even knew what I was talking about.

In the following months I researched about that series in the internet. Some months later, in the first semester of 2005, happily I found the series being sold in the www.mercadolivre.com (a brazilian web site like the american www.amazon.com). I used to participate in the "mercadolivre" to buy and sell movie DVDs. The salesman, surprisingly, lived in my city, Fortaleza-CE (in the Brazilian northeast). I bought it, before this item disappeared of my sights (I wouldn't commit the same mistake again). They were pirate DVDs copied directly from the original series in VHS, but they were in excellent quality.

The series has 13 episodes, from which I had only watched one of them. There were 12 left episodes, 50 minutes each approximately, of contemplation, learning and wonder. I was watching in the chronological order from the first one until the last one. The sensation was so good that it's difficult to describe. Another sensation that I had was the following: after I watched each episode, I knew that still left others for me to watch and it cheered me. A moment arrived that only left 6 episodes that I hadn't seen. And then left 5, and so on. And it's funny, but I was very happy for still having some to see. It was so cool that I was glad knowing: "Uau, I still have 4 more episodes to watch. That's good!". The thirsty for knowledge was big, but also the sensation that I would go on learning was good. So much that I didn't want to watch everything rapidly (I think that I took more than 2 weeks to watch them all). I wanted to fell the sensation of those moments of ignorance, having something to watch. Finally, only one last episode left, number 13, the last sensation of incompleteness in respect to that astonishing series. After I watched it, it would only left me to watch it again (something what I have already done, some episodes I have already watched 4 times). But as we are imperfect, we always have something new to learn. Some detail that was not given the proper attention, some knowledge that was allied to other posterior ones, things that had been forgotten, watching the explanations by a new angle, understanding better, searching in other places for complementary information and so on.

Our ignorance is so great that we have to study continuously (many times just to keep up). In such way that, finishing to watch "Cosmos" just stimulated me even more in the search for knowledge. It was a strong push in the direction of science. A push given by Carl Sagan, one of the greatest popularizers of science that this planet already knew. A push given more than 25 years ago, when he decided to produce the television series "Cosmos", filming throughout three years, in forty places of twelve countries, and that has already reached more than 600 million people in more than 60 countries, being the most wide spread out and watched series of all times. In 2005 they officially launched the series in DVD for the commemoration of its 25 years and the opening is made by his wife, Ann Druyan. Obviously I have already bought it.

Carl Sagan died in December 20, 1996, at the age of 62 years old, after years of battle against a rare illness in the bone marrow called myelodysplasia. Some of this fight is told by his wife in the last book written by him and published after his death "Billions and Billions". He said farewell to his little daughter by saying: "Beautiful, beautiful, Sasha. You are not only beautiful, you are also astonishing.". Ann Druyan makes a emotive story of her last moments with Carl: "During the following hours, the hospital monitors seemed to register a change in the situation. My hopes were renewed, but in the deep of my mind I couldn't stop observing that the doctors didn't share my enthusiasm. They saw in this strength recovery what it really was, what they call 'veranico', one brief truce of the body before its final fight 'and a death vigil'. Carl said to me, calmly: 'I will die.'. 'No', I protested. 'You go to be successful this time, as well as you already were successful before, when everything seemed without hope.' He turned over me with that exact look I had seen innumerable times in the debates and fight of ours twenty years of works together and passionate love. With one mixture of good humor and skepticism, but as always, without no vestige of self-pity, he said ironically: 'Well, we will see who has reason this time.'. Sam, then with five years, came to see his father for the last time. Although he was having a difficulty to breathe and to speak, Carl recomposed himself not to scare his little son. 'I love you, Sam.' it was the only thing he could say. 'I love you too, dad', said Sam solemnly.".

And today (this article was originally written in December 20, 2006) is exactly 10 years that he's gone, leaving nostalgy not only to his family and friends, but to all who had known him and without a doubt to those that will come to know him through his work. His work is so vast and precious that I still have much to learn with him. I have already read six of his innumerable published books and still there are many to go on. That's good!

Today he is no longer a stranger to me, but he seems to be someone from my family, whom I always have lived with.