It occurs to me that this page could at some critical juncture cause me an undo amount of stress. Someone could read this page and think that I were less than what they expected me to be. I shouldn’t run for political office while this site is operational; and mayhap I shouldn’t flirt with the idea of woman (such as it is) for the same reason. I know from experience that too much honesty can be a bad thing, but then again I’m just about done hiding anything from anyone. Maybe if someone asks me something like “What kind of person are you?” I’ll just refer them to this URL. I suppose if someone read this blog and thought less of me, then that isn’t the sort of person I would want to share a great deal of company with.

The mother of a good friend of mine died this past week from a rare type of brain cancer. I knew that the inevitible was going to occur some time soon, but it sort of took me by surprise (as I guess these things do). The woman in question was one of the better human beings that I have ever met. Indeed, her hospitality helped me through some of the more difficult times in my life. It goes without saying that she deserved better, as many people do, but there is a certain buffer that is created when one’s fate is sealed and a timeline given. I can’t say that she was a particularly good friend of mine, but I do feel a connection to her: when I was at my worst, she certainly didn’t judge me. That is strong praise, considering where my worst has taken me in my life.

I understand grieving now to be a communal affair. Individuals don’t grieve so much as grieving multiplies through others. I suppose that is what life is all about: alone we are babes in the woods, together we move mountains. So it is with death that it brings us a greater understanding of those still living. All I can say is this: Sleep well. Or, perhaps Dylan Thomas said it better in a eulogy to his father:

Do not go gently into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

This whole buisness has made me re-examine some of my more or less fundamental tenets. This derth of emotion, experienced by myself for these many years, has led to a certain post hoc justification of same. That is to say that when one is rather emotionless (or in my case omni-emotional), one begins to think that this is some sort of elevated paradigm. Less the emotion, the human spirit is one step closer to enlightenment… or so I used to tell myself. But this week’s experiences in death (we’ll not talk about the murder that happened a couple of blocks from where I live this week) put the brillo to my rusty sense of humanity. I may be broken, but I sense some fixes incoming.

I say all this both out of respect for the dead, and also out of respect for the living. I have recently been reintroduced to certain feelings that I had sought to quash due to their volatile nature. Namely, I have been chaste for a long while now by my own doing. It were a conscious decision as many of my previous experiences have taught me how much trouble such things can bring. In an strange reversal though, this death experience has made me rethink what it means to be alive or, at the very least, feel alive. Some recent conversation has insinuated a certain youthful gaity in me that has brought back some of that perennially elusive charm that I have evinced on occasion.

Lock up your daughters.

-vec