Last night I watched For All Mankind, the documentary on the Apollo missions which combines footage from all of the exploratory voyages along with astronauts' reflections and original music by Brian Eno. There's no narration, no timeline and my initial angst over details - Who's talking now and what mission is he from? How long was the rover on the moon? Did they sleep on the moon? How did they get from the shuttle into the rover and out again? While the moonwalkers were moonwalking, was the third astronaut in the shuttle orbiting the moon, slowly rotating from the light of the earth into the darkness of the far side? How come there is no footage of the sun? - soon gave way to a more sensory experience. I'm glad it's not a detailed documentary and I'm glad the astronauts' voices are unassigned, disembodied, and that the footage from all of the missions is woven together. It becomes disorienting in a good way, and you simply marvel at the exploration of space. The focus is on the missions themselves without the historical, cultural, and political import.

A not unrelated aside - Did that shit actually happen? The fantastical footage, including a lengthy space walk that looked like my brother claymated it, has nudged me one step closer to the camp of conspirators.

It was the disaster of the Challenger mission that my age recalls. I was 10 years old at the time. But do I remember it? I have a dim recollection of watching it in a classroom, even a library, but I'm no longer sure. The image in my mind - of kids in a room, rugby shirts and rolled up jeans, braces and braids, the desks filled, supernumaries (I am among them) linger in the back having been shepherded in from other classes by our teachers who now lean against the windows and radiators - I can't claim as mine with any confidence. I have seen versions of this scene from the moment of the tragic event itself. At the school where astronaut Christa McAuliffe taught the students and teachers gathered in an assembly hall, but classrooms around the nation watched the teacher go into space and the cameras were there, watching them. And they looked like we did.

I think I did watch it, and I think I remember the gasps and I think I remember tears that were not my own.

Another distinctly indistinct memory. Learning of my grandfather's death - I am in the front family room of our first house, my mother is off in the corner of the room with her arms folded. I am across the room from her. The perspective is dizzying, I'm looking up and but the effect is though I'm falling back, the room has an almost fisheye quality to it, and the focus is fuzzy and the colors are browns and beiges. But I don't know how the news was revealed to me, or if it even happened like this.

I don't remember the funeral, or if I attended.