Luna // Nine Months // On Forgetting
Since Luna’s birth, we’ve made a point to celebrate each month-mark. “You’re one month older” we’ll tell her, and then we’ll do something together as a family to commemorate this small milestone of her childhood.
This month, we forgot. Her 10-month mark came and went, and Kristine and I didn’t even notice.
It’s not surprising that this minor measure slipped our minds. The early months of Luna's life were filled with major developmental leaps—those first smiles, laughs, rolls, sits, crawls. Each new achievement deserved celebration and commemoration, and parenting was so new for us that it felt worth celebrating getting through another 30 days. But as the milestones piled up, it became harder to give each one the same weight. Each day now brings some small but steady sign of progress in the same way that crawling becomes walking. Luna’s life is one of continuous evolution marked more by persistence than sudden success.
So, we find ourselves forgetting, not just the month-marks, but also the small daily details that once seemed so monumental. When was the exact date she said her first real word? What day was it when she took five steps across the living room unassisted? When exactly did she master the art of clapping?
Perhaps this forgetting is simply a necessary byproduct of her growth. Luna is becoming less of a mystery to us, and so the compulsion to analyze and record every moment is diminishing. As her personhood asserts itself, she’s no longer merely a bundle of milestones to log but instead an individual coming into focus.
I welcome this type of forgetting as our family settles into a new normal.Each moment will remain precious, whether celebrated or not.
What I Read
This week was about the two sides of technology: Hardware and software.
The Perfect Thing details the iPod's unassuming yet monumental role in reshaping our digital landscape. Published in 2006, reading this is a bit like stepping into a time capsule, written so early that it barely scratches the surface of the societal impacts of the digital music revolution. It also reminded me that tech writing from this era was…weirdly sexist? There’s lots of fetishization of technology, as well as uncomfortable analogies.
On the subject matter: The book underscores how the iPod emerged in the aftermath of Napster and the early chaotic days of digital music piracy. In contrast to the Wild West of illegal downloads, the combination of iTunes and the iPod offered an appealing legal alternative where consumers could conveniently access music. Apple made carrying one's entire music library a tangible reality, mainstreaming digital music distribution and untethering audio from physical media.
It was interesting reading about an Apple product, now widely noted as a smash success, that was initially met with little excitement and plenty of skepticism. Is the Vision Pro on a similar journey?
Now, software. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels insightfully chronicles the perilous development of hit games, uncovering the Herculean efforts behind some of the industry's biggest titles. Each chapter is dedicated to a different game and the grueling process of bringing it to life. Schreier's background as an investigative reporter means that this book doesn’t shy away from talking about the industry's darker aspects, including crunch time and project cancellations (RIP Star Wars 1313) while maintaining a deep respect for the dedication of everyone involved.
Like The Perfect Thing, this book is also a bit of a time capsule.
Published in 2017, it chronicles the story of Bungie while still deep in development of a murky Destiny and before the release of Destiny 2. It captures CD Projekt Red at the height of their acclaim and before the announcement and release of the much maligned Cyberpunk 2077. I loved reading this nuanced account of an under-appreciated art form.
What I Watched
It felt wrong to watch Escape from New York last week and not give time to its sequel based in the city in which I live. Escape from LA was, unfortunately, not exactly my kind of movie about Los Angeles. The over-the-top villains, the ridiculous action sequences, and the excessive (and poorly aged) CGI made the futuristic LA setting feel more cartoonish than chilling. The bigger issue to me is that the movie lacked any coherent statement about the city it portrayed. It aimed to satirize America's obsession with beauty and vanity, yet did so superficially. LA has always been ripe for thoughtful social commentary and stylistic exploration in fiction, and though the film hints at environmental collapse and the dark side of evangelical religion, it never quite commits.
But maybe I shouldn’t be asking that of the film where Snake Plissken paraglides into Disneyland and starts shooting people. Perhaps subtle social commentary isn’t its top priority. The film knows exactly what it is: A vehicle for Kurt Russell to don an eyepatch again and spout one-liners while chaos ensues around him, and on that front, it delivers.
I also watched First Reformed, a movie that’s been on the top of my list for a long time. From the writer of Taxi Driver comes more ‘one weird guy against the world’ storytelling, but this time make it about a clergyman.
I fear that I watched this at the wrong moment in my life. It’s about faith and despair, and I’m in a season where I’m less interested in thinking deeply on the bleakness of the human experience. I’m looking for hope, and trying to capture a bit of it in this newsletter, week by week.
Is this why the ‘dad movie’ genre is just mindless action films where the hero always wins the end of the day?
That's all for now,
From the present moment,
