I might change that title.
July 17th, 2024
There’s a scene toward the end of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories where Woody’s character, Sandy, comes to an epiphany about his reasons for spending the whole film reminiscing about his contextual ex-girlfriend, Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling). After being fatally wounded, Sandy lies on an operating table and notes that, “when you're dying, your life really does become very authentic.” Suddenly a memory stands out -- one where everything clicked just right. A flashback: one afternoon, after a walk in the park, Sandy enjoys his lunch while Dorrie lies reading on the floor, Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “Stardust” playing on the speaker. He looks at her and she smiles. And it’s that single moment of everything coming together perfectly -- a “stardust memory” -- that Sandy can’t get out of his mind. And one that he spends the majority of the film not being able to move past, to the point of it affecting his life and lovers down the line.
I think I related to that moment in regard to how my memory’s begun to change. Like, when I was a kid, I could remember things day-by-day. I was actually surprised when adults couldn’t remember what it was like to be six. Life functioned kind of like a chapter book -- a new section every time I moved hemispheres that was lost without considering the previous entries. Of course, it’s always been generally the same arc -- have a shitty first year, find a best friend by year two, get a girlfriend at the end of it all that I have to break up with because life said so. Minor changes throughout as I’ve gotten and continue to get ever so slightly less stupid.
But when I got to college, life started to feel more like an elongated film franchise. The previous episodes have some bearing, but they’re not something I really think about anymore. Where I used to be able to easily recall individual conversations, bad haircuts, etc., now I only barely scavenge those thoughts in the back of my photo library. But there’s a benefit to that -- the big stuff stands out a lot more. A small collection of similar “stardust memories” where things were just perfect. And I don’t mean perfect like everything was amazing or anything, but just when things clicked correctly. Memories I couldn’t have any other way.
The problem is that, like Sandy, I spend a lot of time trying to recreate these events out of some religious dedication to the past. There’s a distinction, though -- it’s not that I’m a hopeless romantic or anything, it’s that I’m a crippling nostalgic.
I visited Hong Kong in June. It was my last visit, as my parents are getting stationed to a new continent. While it does make me spoiled to have reservations about such a unique taxpayer-funded opportunity, it is really difficult to put a New York life on pause for a month-plus visit across the globe. Not that I ever deny the opportunity, it’s just that I struggle with keeping my head in Hong Kong without planning and longing for my return to New York.
I do try, though. There’s a collection of old hideouts and juvenile bars that meant something to me in high school that I make my rounds through. Viewing the sunset over Stanley Plaza, walking through the quiet graveyard at the peak of Cheung Chau, getting religiously drunk at Wingman with Zack (their truffle fries are unparalleled). Most importantly, there’s this always-breathtaking sunrise out the view of my parents’ East-facing apartment. And admittedly, beyond the sunrise’s beauty is a sort of “stardust memory” (pretentious term, I know. Couldn’t think of anything better) I’ve been looking to sort of recreate.
Because we moved to Hong Kong in my senior year of high school, Dad and I arrived about two weeks before the rest of my family to finish our Zero-Covid-mandated quarantine in time for me to make my first day of school. I vilified Dad a lot at the time (I was a teenager) and was nervous about spending that amount of time with him in isolation, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed his company more. I recall less than a hundred words being spoken throughout the entirety of our medical house arrest -- a sort of quiet comradery where talking was only used for utility. I remember the smell of the buttered pan we used to fry our eggs, the shitty coffee provided by the Consulate, the wonderful silence we’d greet each other with when we stepped outside to watch that sunrise. In the following year, it became part of my morning ritual to view it with a grape-flavored cigarette and a cup of cinnamon coffee before the 6:30 school bus. Helped comfort me through the weird breakups I had throughout the year (I had three girlfriends), through my college rejections, my loneliness. It was a hard year.
But this recent trip -- these recent months -- I’ve been kind of a degenerate. I could blame it on something like pledging or school, but really I’m just tired. It’s gotten more difficult to get out of bed, to write, to do anything. To make my rounds. Plus I’m getting sick all the time. I dunno.
I missed my last sunrise in Hong Kong. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the previous day and spent the majority of my time awake at a poolside Fourth of July party (which, in true Hong Kong fashion, would never be held on the actual fourth). Stuffing my face with hot dogs and overpriced beer, flirting for no real reason (what, was I gonna get laid at a pool party?). Not sleeping enough. Went out that night to hit all my old high school bars, most of them empty. Got home at like four in the morning, drunkenly intending to sleep for an hour and a half to wake up in time for the sunrise. I slept two.
And I remember the scene. Waking up to check the clock, hyperventilating as I ran to the front window. The blaring sun yelling that I had missed it. I had missed it and I was half-naked and hungover and sweaty and tired and that was it. I had missed it and I will never get the chance to see it again.
What’s weird is that, on the plane ride home, I started to think of another one of those “stardust memories” (still hate the term) from my freshman year of high school. And it seems like it doesn’t have much to do with this but bear with me.
It was around what I now consider my golden age of puberty -- a time when I was first discovering some of my now-favorite grown-up emotions. There was this girl that I was close friends with in those brace-faced middle school days that I, upon reaching high school, had realized I had fallen heels-over-head for. I could muse that it was too childish to be love, but I feel like love now is more ridden by insecurity and nonsense than it was when I actually had acne. Of course, we were both fifteen and awkward in our approach toward it, but things eventually lined up just right. That is, before I got the news that I’d be moving to Virginia almost immediately.
We had one date. Just one. Dinner and a movie. At the time I had this weird fascination with ties (I was quite proud to have just learned the windsor knot) and felt it necessary to wear it to dinner and a movie with an untucked shirt -- not knowing exactly how special she was for not judging it and letting me be me. I kept trying to make her laugh in the theater, hiding the fact that I had no confidence to make any move at all. I was content to just enjoy the small miracle of a girl like her holding my hand before ruining it with my less-than-apt 9th-grade kissing ability. By the time I walked her home, I’d still done nothing. She started for the door, but took the last second to run toward me and kiss me once before saying goodbye.
What's funny is that the whole drive home, the whole trip to Virginia, even years after, I couldn’t believe that I didn’t kiss her back. Couldn’t believe all the time I had wasted with people other than her. Kept trying to recreate the night (or her) with other women. Yeah, I know that’s dick-ish but I was like sixteen.
Here’s the thing, though: that was a damn good first kiss. And, looking back on it, I don’t think I could’ve had it any other way. Beyond the beautiful childish romance of it all, just the kind of kid I was. The fact that it was new and unexpected and not what I thought I wanted, but still just absolutely perfect -- in a way that I can only now properly appreciate. I think that’s how these “stardust memories” work.
The evening before the inevitable sunrise tragedy -- my last evening in Hong Kong, I had a desire to catch my last sunset over Stanley Plaza, but I was too distracted by the party, etc. to plan around it (still a degenerate). I mentioned it when we got home, to which Dad pointed out it was nearly too late, but he offered up an alternative. He rushed us to this restaurant in Central with a perfect view of the sun’s setting over the West end of the city. That was nice.
It was one of those cool summer evenings, a Saturday. A soft humid wind. I had just been severely sunburned, so I wasn’t moving all that much. My phone was dead and my plans for the night were up in the air (I had just been uninvited from a group dinner). But none of that seemed to matter. I was just with my Dad, taking a few photos of that sunset. Having an old fashioned (my first old fashioned, mind you). Talking about plans for the future. And I remember thinking just how lucky I was to have a guy like him as my Dad. How lucky I was to have my last sunset be that damn pretty. To have a life with perfect evenings like that. And I don’t think it was anything specific that moved me as much as it was everything just coming together so perfectly.
I think Allen was getting at something with the ending of Stardust Memories that I’m only now starting to understand. Because it’s really only after Sandy stops trying to relive Dorrie that he can be with Marie-Christine Barrault’s Isobel (the woman he actually has a future with). Only when he’s okay with the fact that Dorrie and that “stardust memory” aren’t gonna come back can he move on to make newer, possibly better ones.
I think I’m okay with having missed that last sunrise. Okay because I think I’m lucky enough. That it won’t be the last of meaningful views just as high school wasn’t the last of beautiful romance. Perfect memories like these are nice to have, but not to live off of. I think I’m ready enough to stop looking back for that kind of solace. Old enough, at least, to start looking ahead.
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