At ten, his family moved to a
bigger row house in Northeast Philly. No longer rooming with his older brother,
he was free to investigate the radio without quarrel. Near the end of the dial
he found a classical station. His interest piqued, he began tuning in
regularly, often listening through the night, until the fourth of Beethoven's
Fifth took hold of his soul and ushered him into a sustained passion for the
great composers. He started taking the subway to free monthly concerts at The
Philadelphia Academy of Music. There, keen in his seat with
the orchestra before him, he was a sonic adventurer in pursuit of the next
grand crescendo, the next earthshaking finale.
As a teenager, his curiosity
expanded from sound to the solar system. An introductory astronomy text called Stars found its way into his hands, and the information on celestial bodies sent his
imagination into orbit. Soon, secondhand descriptions weren't enough, so he
saved money from odd jobs for a telescope through which he could verify
Jupiter's four moons and Saturn's many rings with his own two eyes.
Around the same time, he
happened upon a second book, the one that would most decisively focus his
inquiring temperament: Lemkin's Chemistry.
Its pages described the visual magic of certain chemical reactions, which
quickly converted him from armchair tourist to young, experimental chemist. He
was in the basement precipitating colors or heating ammonium chloride to see it
smoke like crazy. Or out on the front sidewalk igniting test tubes packed with
flammable powder and attached to train-set wheels to make mini-rockets (that
left major potholes when the mixture proved too flammable).
Because there was so much
knowledge available, organic chemistry was the perfect subject to satiate an
intellectual appetite, so he continued digesting it into adulthood with a fellowship
at Penn, a Ph.D., and a career in research and development. There were also
personal experiments with lysergic acid diethylamide along the way, some internal chemical
exploration (an inquisitive mind is a gateway drug).
Music, science, psychedelics―their unifying allure was the charged anticipation of what awaited
in the next moment, the rush of dramatic unfolding, the promise of new and
evermore curving pathways of experience.
I hope that his journey through
fatherhood was as formative and affecting.
Like it is being his son.
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