I'm in Love--with Carl Sagan

Over the past few weeks, I have watched the 14-hour, seven-CD series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage," originally aired on PBS in 1980 and still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It is narrated by the late astronomer, astrophysicist, author, and cosmologist Carl Sagan.

I may have seen part of the series three decades ago when it first aired, but I don't remember doing so. Like many people of a certain age, and others such as my son who seem to know more about the times of my youth than I do, I always associated Carl Sagan with his dramatic, exaggerated "billions and billions" of light years and galaxies. But he was so much more than that.

After spending 13 evenings with Carl, I am sorry I never met him while he was alive because I really could have fallen for him. He had a poetic nature and a sensitive spirit that were enhanced by smoking pot. (That shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.) In his series about the stars he frequently worked in the folly of military spending, the ridiculousness of preparing for nuclear war, the commonality of human beings, and the simultaneous free thinking of the ancient world about the celestial bodies and yet the nonexistence of challenges to the status quo of slavery and the diminishment of women. He spoke so poetically and dare I say mystically about the universe, the thirst for knowledge, and the human spirit, yet he was also an avowed skeptic and agnostic. He quoted Walt Whitman, then easily segued to an explanation of worm holes, quasars, and alternate universes. In "Cosmos," he traveled the world, sometimes slicing an apple pie in Cambridge University's dining room or sipping coffee at a Greek cafe or walking through deserted ancient temples. Quite often he philosophized along a rocky seashore or fervently wished he could have been one of the scholars at the Library at Alexandria before its burning in 391 A.D.

A few of his many choice words that I scribbled down while watching him on my laptop:
"We are star stuff." (He said this a lot.)
"our ship of the imagination"
"Stars are the phoenixes rising from their own ashes."
"We are, in a very deep sense, tied to the cosmos."
"It makes good sense to revere the stars for we are their children." (That's fantastic!)

Yes, I could have really gone for someone like Carl. And from what I've read, I'm not the only woman who found him cute. He married three times, all remarkable women in their own right--a biologist, then an artist, and with him til the end, his "Cosmos" co-author. He fathered five children.

Something that touched me most profoundly about Carl Sagan is how he longed to make contact with intergalactic travelers. I feel very strongly that contact will happen soon, within the next few years. Carl died in 1996, 14 years ago in December. I like to think that the star stuff that was Carl has reconfigured into an adolescent human who will see the day when ETs and humans make indisputable contact. Or perhaps, as he was quite an enlightened soul during his time on earth, he has evolved to a higher level of being and will be one of the visiting aliens whom he had wanted to meet.