Craig Calcaterra
  • Blog
  • Keepers
  • About Craig
  • Resume
  • The Axe Murder
  • Cats
  • Get In Touch
  • Blog
  • Keepers
  • About Craig
  • Resume
  • The Axe Murder
  • Cats
  • Get In Touch

Jump

1/15/2014

2 Comments

 
Picture
I watched “Battlestar Galactica” for the first time in 2011. I bought my treadmill, put a TV with Netflix in front of it and chose a show with spaceships and action and stuff. It worked well. I lost, like, 30 pounds watching that show, so it did me a solid. But it also got a little too far into my head.

As I was watching it on the treadmill in 2011, my marriage was collapsing. I began to see – or maybe just hallucinate – all kinds of parallels between what happened on the show and what was happening in real life. Not literally, of course. I mean, I would have remembered it if cyborgs and robots and shit came after me.  But it did work pretty damn well as grand metaphor.

The end of the world as I knew it going on as the the world ended for the characters. They kept their ship, I kept my house and all efforts were made to maintain normalcy and civilization as we knew it even when it made no sense to do so. Eventually it got to a point where Galactica couldn’t go on anymore. It made its last jump, its back was broken and all that was left to do was to fly it into the sun and start over.

I never truly did that. I’ve done a lot to start over and reboot and make peace with my new, post-apocalyptic reality, but I never went all the way. I look around sometimes and still see little octagonal pieces of paper and formalities and routines that are designed to impose order over chaos and make everything run smoothly. I’ve needed those things at times. I’ve needed to maintain the fiction that life is not all that different than it was before and that I’m still in command of a ship with long-established rules and a clearly laid out mission.

I just started re-watching Battlestar Galactica again. As I get further back into it, I feel less and less sure of those rules and that mission. Maybe because I know what will happen this time. Maybe because I know how untenable holding on to the old ways is.

​I wonder if we’ve had too many system breakdowns and compromises of protocol to continue on as if nothing were different. I wonder, sometimes, if I need to just disembark to a safe warm place and send the old battlestar and all it represents into the sun.
2 Comments

    Hi.

    I'm Craig. I'm a writer. I work for NBC Sports.  This is where I write stuff that doesn't really go there. Read more about me here. Or, if you'd like, drop me a line. 

    Categories

    All
    Books
    Business
    Entertainment
    Food And Drink
    General
    Law
    Media
    Music
    Personal
    Politics
    Science
    Social Media
    Sports
    Travel
    Writing


    ​Recent Archives

    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    October 2011
    May 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    July 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    June 2008

    RSS Feed

    Older Archives

    2014
    ​2013
    2012
    2011
    2010
    2009
    2008

Proudly powered by Weebly