James Lileks. His Daily Bleat was one of the first blogs I ever encountered, well over 10 years ago — man, that’s hard to process, that I’ve been reading blogs for over a decade — and I’ve been a more-or-less faithful reader ever since. But I have to confess, there have been times when I’ve been tempted to walk away from him for good. While I share his affinity for mid-20th century ephemera, architecture, and culture, he can be so bloody confounding at times. I disagree with his politics, and find him pretty unbearable when he veers into that domain; his frequent schtick of transcribing customer service encounters in minute detail has grown tiresome; his hatred of all things 1970s is tedious (I actually quite liked that decade; it was a good time to be a child); and his curmudgeonly attitude sometimes gets to be a little too much even for me, a fellow member of the august tribe of misanthropic “get off my lawn” types.

But then, just when I’m ready to pull the plug, he goes and writes something like this (he’s referring to last week’s news that the Voyager 1 space probe, launched in the landmark year 1977, is finally crossing the threshold from our solar system into interstellar space):

I’d like to think it’s not the last we’ve seen of it. If we build fast engines and get out there someday, someone will go looking for it. But it would be wrong to bring it home; that’s not its place. It would be a tourist attraction, like the ruins of an old colonial fort from the 17th century. Pass alongside, snap a picture: if you’ll look out the portside windows, we’re passing Voyager 1, which has a record containing the music of Chuck Berry and Beethoven. What haunts me is the idea that it will never be found, the record never be heard, and long after the sun has guttered out, the idea of Beethoven, unrealized, floats in an empty void, an arrangement of code.

As a would-be writer, I envy that paragraph. It’s an idea I wish I’d had, expressed more eloquently than I know I probably would. And as a space buff and a die-hard romantic, it makes me wistful. It’s a vision that I hope comes true. I can see it so clearly in my imagination: hundreds of passengers lining a futuristic version of a modern-day cruise ship’s promenade railing, pressing against floor-to-ceiling viewports that have been uncovered for just this occasion, straining to catch a glimpse of a historical treasure. The anticipation builds. A couple of people point excitedly at spots that turn out to be nothing at all, false sightings. Then the ship’s officers helpfully announce over the speakers where the crowd should look… and there it is, the legendary Flying Dutchman of space… a tiny, fragile-looking thing, pitted and scoured by centuries of exposure to interstellar dust and micrometeorites, glistening faintly like a dragonfly in the glare of the liner’s external floodlights. Its nuclear powercells are going cold, its transmitter no longer calls home, but somehow, improbably, it’s still going — still voyaging — ever outward…

I wish I could be there to see it, to experience a passage like that. Now that would be something to write about…