This Mortal Coil

Millvina Dean, in June of this year, passed away, at the age of 97 in a nursing home in Southampton, England. She was the last survivor of the RMS Titanic. An era did not pass with her. That era, the era in which people crossed the ocean in ships, before commercial passenger airlines (and luggage charges), before the New Deal, when all decent men wore hats outside and removed them at the table, and where indecent men were doing the kinds of things that Tiger Woods has been accused (some things never change) -- that era had passed long ago. It faded slowly, with each new technical invention, with each new political invention, with each new atrocity and triumph. If you live long enough, you will see the world change and the people who defined your world will, inexorably, go the way of all flesh. Cynics believe each change, in some way degenerates us. Children, with hand-held calculators and digital clocks never learned to perform arithmetic or how to read a clock (the big hand is on the ...). Latin is not taught in schools, and children text their friends at all (mostly inappropriate) times. Optimists, we've all met one, inform us that Latin was boring, clocks no longer require hands, and calculators have freed our minds with the minutiae of multiplication tables so that young folk could master differential calculus.

As film noir fans, we are familiar with the passing of our favorite actors. Every year, there are fewer and fewer. Today, Jennifer Jones died. She was 90. Jones was not really a noir actress, although she did co-star in Beat the Devil, along with Bogart, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollobrigida and which was directed by John Huston and co-scripted by Truman Capote. Based on that alone, you'd want to rush out to the store (or send your request to Netfl*x) and get what, on paper, sounds like a masterpiece. Life can disappoint us when it comes to such expectations.

Ms. Jones was married to David O. Selznick. When they met, the role of Mrs. Selznick was occupied by Irene, daughter of Louis Mayer, but Hollywood never allowed one's current marital status to interfere with what might potentially follow -- that glittery new future of greener pastures on the other side of that proverbial fence.

Jennifer Jones had a long life. In casual conversation, I recently mentioned that Humphrey Bogart died at the age of 57 (forty years short of Millvina). But, the retort was, he really lived. I was thinking the same thing. There is a pseudo-spiritualist who believes that we must capture each moment and live in the now, not in a carpe diem, sense, but in some deeper, non-defined sense that only a spiritualist can evoke (and which tends to keep them in limos and mistresses as long as they can keep a place on the Times Best Seller list). But a physicist will put lie to the "now" concept. There is no now. Time, like the calculus of space under a curve, is a description, not an absolute value. We tend to think that the past grows and the future becomes shorter. Indeed, it does. For us. That, however, is not a natural absolute. Time does not pass. We do. But before we pass, assuming we live to a certain age, we will witness the passing of Bogart, Huston, and Peter Lorre. The movies and the stories of their lives will continue until such a time as described by physicists and spiritualists when all that is will be no longer. Until then, we can relive a past (not necessarily our own) through the magic of DVDs and retro houses.