... When All You Have is YouTube to Witness You?
Click on the above Who's Sad in America to see what I'm talking about.
I'm watching my clock to see how long it takes for parents to sue YouTube for this.
"He posted a suicide note, where he said he had hurt other people and hated himself for being a failure."
Who's going to sue the radius of people that let this man slip so far off the radar?
And why is an Australian website reporting on it? Who heard this story first - Fox News or Australia?
19-year-old Abraham K Biggs commits suicide live on webcam
Shame on us - for throwing yet another 19 year old man away. Shame on us ...
###
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Who's Sad in India?
CHAYYA LAL was.
...
IS.
There’s a strangelet dying to be discovered.
There’s a girl in India dying not to see it.
There are scientists holding their breaths, crossing their fingers, assuring their families that in 50 days, they’ll still be here, feet firmly planted on the ground.
And there are bankers in New York and London contemplating the gravity of their actions, their choices, their workaday assumptions.
This is a black hole that we’re already in. Chayya felt it a little more than the rest of us did/do. Some people just feel drawn to a black hole’s gravity more than the rest of us. Some people find the Possibility of Things teeming with such horror that it’s easier to swallow poison.
There’s a lot of Possibility in the air these days – an election year, an Iran, and Iraq War, Russia’s restless, the oil, the air, the texting, the texting, the texting …
And a few coincidental days after that Collider got bumping, the US financial markets started falling apart. We can’t see that happening, but we hear about it. Most of us have no idea how it’s going to affect us, but nor did we understand how the blips and bleeps of the digital world of information would change us either. Nothing you can see, but you know you’re different.
A symptom of what’s shaking underground in Geneva? The smell of a Tower of Babel Society?
There’s dark matter out there/in here/sitting next to you and yet …
We Americans feel stronger now. So far away from the 9/11 attacks, even now, with our losing our homes and pricey tomatoes and gallons of milk poking holes in our savings, we still feel stronger. We see the Lehman employees hitting the road with their bankers boxes full of cubicle contents and personal effects and we think, “Eh, they have a savings, they’re loaded. They don’t affect my rent … all their monolopolizing Excel spreadsheets – nope, nothing to do with me.”
And the scientists with their particle-smashing machines and a new generation of black hole believers…
Nothing to do with me.
But there’s me … and there’s Chayya Lal. There’s some future we’re sensing here. And it’s terrible … terrible in the old Latin way.
And there’s this guy looking down from his Lehman office.
This office that was bought for $650 million after the World Trade Center office went down in less than an hour. This office that gave its employees a feeling of surety … without the ‘S.E.C.’
And as these people crowd down below looking up at him -
New Yorkers look up when the Terrible starts raining down. They know that his life’s collapse today will be the fallout that they’ll feel for days to come. Remotely, directly, laterally. Not sure how, not sure when, but their eyes are cursed with a certain particle-smashing knowledge that Things ARE NOT Okay.
I leaned over the shoulder of a young guy reading the newspaper on the morning train, and I saw this small article on an Indian girl who took control of her chaos before it spread beyond control. I leaned over the shoulder of a guy I’ll never see again and felt a girl’s fear 28 hours away from me. I couldn’t look away.
And all I felt was chaos.
Maybe she didn’t want to feel it happen – the world colliding, the world smashing. Was too smart or too weak to watch the universe expand in its complex ways and to be a part of it.
Maybe I’m too dumb, too overeducated, too isolated and too weak, too spiritually limited, too terrestrially contained, too voyeuristically driven, too LITTLE to off myself too. Maybe I’m just too stunned standing in the light of all of the dilemmas of world of + and -. Maybe I’m just lazy and scared and full of fear and I’m scared of dying at my own hand. Maybe I want to give that baton to the Laws of Physics and Averages.
But I’m sad she’s gone. Particle-smashing is not so scary if you’re just willing to fall apart a little. But maybe if she fell apart, she’d fall into a black hole of never landing and she’d see you or me clinging to the walls and say, “Oh, shit! Really?”
I don’t know. Maybe her family was neglecting her and her choices as a teenage girl sucked ass. Maybe someone took advantage of her. Maybe her secrets… maybe she’s full of holes herself and that was just enough.
But what happens to her body – where do her particles go, once her soul has left? Is she a more manageable form of matter now? In two crowded countries, suicide’s becoming the population control.
These self-killed people – they’re still here, somewhere, somehow. Not haunting, but pulsing on the wind, living in the water, beatboxing from the morgue. Just changing the form of matter. Never leaving. Never not staying. I refuse to think people just die (with the exception of my own father). I refuse to think that people are garbage and just thrown away, their impact ceasing. That garbage is in a landfill turning into something else. A methane stroking your skin in the fall breeze.
Think twice about Chayya and particle smashing and your shot friends and your hung sisters. The planet is recycling us, not letting us go, sloughing off bits of ourselves into its own shower. We’re never clean. Never new. Forget it.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Where is Chayya Lal now?
Has she become part of the deepening black hole of the rest of us remaining?
Was she alone, in her fear?
Is she still afraid? Is she right here? Now?
What she feared about the end of the world, she took control of. In Science’s poetic way to control its world, there is the possibility that what collapses us, recreates us.
:recreate
:recreate
:recreate
:recreate
.
.
.
.
.
.
… … … She can’t be just gone.
And her sadness and fears are not over. She just passed them on to me.
:re-mecreate
:re-mecreate
:re-chayyacreate
:re-chayyacreate
.
.
.
"Listen to the depressed people who have a feeling something’s bad in the air because often it is. The idea that we repress our unhappiness rather than listen to it is just as dysfunctional psychically as it is physically. If your leg is broken, the pain is there for a reason. You don’t just take morphine, you reset the leg. …
To be conscious at this point in human history is to be sad. "
~ Marianne Williamson
~~~
...
IS.
There’s a strangelet dying to be discovered.
There’s a girl in India dying not to see it.
There are scientists holding their breaths, crossing their fingers, assuring their families that in 50 days, they’ll still be here, feet firmly planted on the ground.
And there are bankers in New York and London contemplating the gravity of their actions, their choices, their workaday assumptions.
This is a black hole that we’re already in. Chayya felt it a little more than the rest of us did/do. Some people just feel drawn to a black hole’s gravity more than the rest of us. Some people find the Possibility of Things teeming with such horror that it’s easier to swallow poison.
There’s a lot of Possibility in the air these days – an election year, an Iran, and Iraq War, Russia’s restless, the oil, the air, the texting, the texting, the texting …
And a few coincidental days after that Collider got bumping, the US financial markets started falling apart. We can’t see that happening, but we hear about it. Most of us have no idea how it’s going to affect us, but nor did we understand how the blips and bleeps of the digital world of information would change us either. Nothing you can see, but you know you’re different.
A symptom of what’s shaking underground in Geneva? The smell of a Tower of Babel Society?
There’s dark matter out there/in here/sitting next to you and yet …
We Americans feel stronger now. So far away from the 9/11 attacks, even now, with our losing our homes and pricey tomatoes and gallons of milk poking holes in our savings, we still feel stronger. We see the Lehman employees hitting the road with their bankers boxes full of cubicle contents and personal effects and we think, “Eh, they have a savings, they’re loaded. They don’t affect my rent … all their monolopolizing Excel spreadsheets – nope, nothing to do with me.”
And the scientists with their particle-smashing machines and a new generation of black hole believers…
Nothing to do with me.
But there’s me … and there’s Chayya Lal. There’s some future we’re sensing here. And it’s terrible … terrible in the old Latin way.
And there’s this guy looking down from his Lehman office.
This office that was bought for $650 million after the World Trade Center office went down in less than an hour. This office that gave its employees a feeling of surety … without the ‘S.E.C.’
And as these people crowd down below looking up at him -
New Yorkers look up when the Terrible starts raining down. They know that his life’s collapse today will be the fallout that they’ll feel for days to come. Remotely, directly, laterally. Not sure how, not sure when, but their eyes are cursed with a certain particle-smashing knowledge that Things ARE NOT Okay.
I leaned over the shoulder of a young guy reading the newspaper on the morning train, and I saw this small article on an Indian girl who took control of her chaos before it spread beyond control. I leaned over the shoulder of a guy I’ll never see again and felt a girl’s fear 28 hours away from me. I couldn’t look away.
And all I felt was chaos.
Maybe she didn’t want to feel it happen – the world colliding, the world smashing. Was too smart or too weak to watch the universe expand in its complex ways and to be a part of it.
Maybe I’m too dumb, too overeducated, too isolated and too weak, too spiritually limited, too terrestrially contained, too voyeuristically driven, too LITTLE to off myself too. Maybe I’m just too stunned standing in the light of all of the dilemmas of world of + and -. Maybe I’m just lazy and scared and full of fear and I’m scared of dying at my own hand. Maybe I want to give that baton to the Laws of Physics and Averages.
But I’m sad she’s gone. Particle-smashing is not so scary if you’re just willing to fall apart a little. But maybe if she fell apart, she’d fall into a black hole of never landing and she’d see you or me clinging to the walls and say, “Oh, shit! Really?”
I don’t know. Maybe her family was neglecting her and her choices as a teenage girl sucked ass. Maybe someone took advantage of her. Maybe her secrets… maybe she’s full of holes herself and that was just enough.
But what happens to her body – where do her particles go, once her soul has left? Is she a more manageable form of matter now? In two crowded countries, suicide’s becoming the population control.
These self-killed people – they’re still here, somewhere, somehow. Not haunting, but pulsing on the wind, living in the water, beatboxing from the morgue. Just changing the form of matter. Never leaving. Never not staying. I refuse to think people just die (with the exception of my own father). I refuse to think that people are garbage and just thrown away, their impact ceasing. That garbage is in a landfill turning into something else. A methane stroking your skin in the fall breeze.
Think twice about Chayya and particle smashing and your shot friends and your hung sisters. The planet is recycling us, not letting us go, sloughing off bits of ourselves into its own shower. We’re never clean. Never new. Forget it.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Where is Chayya Lal now?
Has she become part of the deepening black hole of the rest of us remaining?
Was she alone, in her fear?
Is she still afraid? Is she right here? Now?
What she feared about the end of the world, she took control of. In Science’s poetic way to control its world, there is the possibility that what collapses us, recreates us.
:recreate
:recreate
:recreate
:recreate
.
.
.
.
.
.
… … … She can’t be just gone.
And her sadness and fears are not over. She just passed them on to me.
:re-mecreate
:re-mecreate
:re-chayyacreate
:re-chayyacreate
.
.
.
"Listen to the depressed people who have a feeling something’s bad in the air because often it is. The idea that we repress our unhappiness rather than listen to it is just as dysfunctional psychically as it is physically. If your leg is broken, the pain is there for a reason. You don’t just take morphine, you reset the leg. …
To be conscious at this point in human history is to be sad. "
~ Marianne Williamson
~~~
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Who's Sad in America?
SHE is.
She heard the verdict. 50 shots that killed fiance Sean Bell on the morning before his wedding. 3 cops. No charges.
50 shots. 50 shots. 50 shots.
Getty Images' photographer didn't bother to get her name, but she heard that three New York cops were found not guilty on all charges of the shooting death of Sean Bell - and this is the day she's having.
50.
Who Else is Sad ...?
HE is.
I'm betting this cop's sad he didn't ask for this day off like maybe he thought about doing.
50 shots. 50? Really? 50?!
Who Else ...?
THESE GUYS were.
They were sad at some point in the day when some photographer wasn't around to witness it. Maybe privately. Maybe at work when they received an email blast. Maybe in passing at the foot of the steps of City Hall. Maybe years before at a completely different verdict, a different Sean Bell, another time.
But Sadness, when it's just bored with being sad, co-opts into Anger. And Action. And Unity.
And when the day passes, that Sadness ends up looking like this - the face of a group of people who KNOW that this verdict is not about race. Race is too easy. Race is not vogue anymore.
THIS VERDICT IS ABOUT POWER.
Power ... power is harder, more elusive, more, actually, to the point. It's about having too little and too much and WHAT WOULD YOU DO when you have too much
power?
sadness?
anger?
Look at these people -
- it's not about race.
It's about 50 shots.
50 shots of power.
~~~
She heard the verdict. 50 shots that killed fiance Sean Bell on the morning before his wedding. 3 cops. No charges.
50 shots. 50 shots. 50 shots.
Getty Images' photographer didn't bother to get her name, but she heard that three New York cops were found not guilty on all charges of the shooting death of Sean Bell - and this is the day she's having.
50.
Who Else is Sad ...?
HE is.
I'm betting this cop's sad he didn't ask for this day off like maybe he thought about doing.
50 shots. 50? Really? 50?!
Who Else ...?
THESE GUYS were.
They were sad at some point in the day when some photographer wasn't around to witness it. Maybe privately. Maybe at work when they received an email blast. Maybe in passing at the foot of the steps of City Hall. Maybe years before at a completely different verdict, a different Sean Bell, another time.
But Sadness, when it's just bored with being sad, co-opts into Anger. And Action. And Unity.
And when the day passes, that Sadness ends up looking like this - the face of a group of people who KNOW that this verdict is not about race. Race is too easy. Race is not vogue anymore.
THIS VERDICT IS ABOUT POWER.
Power ... power is harder, more elusive, more, actually, to the point. It's about having too little and too much and WHAT WOULD YOU DO when you have too much
power?
sadness?
anger?
Look at these people -
- it's not about race.
It's about 50 shots.
50 shots of power.
~~~
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Who's Sad in America?
THE MAN WHO WAS AFRAID OF HIS DARK is.
Met a German guy at a karaoke bar. Dimples. Not the German guy. The bar was named Dimples.
He sat next to me at this celeb-fave bar in Burbank. Burbank, California.
He leaned over my arm and pointed to #135 in the song list book.
"Neil Diamond, yah? 'Forever in Blue Jeans'? Yah?"
I looked up into the brightly squinted blue eyes of who I would come to know later as Dennis.
Dennis Dennis Full of Shame
That’s what I call him now.
In a German accent and stilted laugh, we took turns picking out songs for each other that we’d never sing. We threatened each other with Phoebe Snow songs, pitched our own bravado with Lynard Skynard trivia, and high-fived when we both saw Neil Young’s’ “Old Man” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at the same time.
Dennis Dennis Full of Shame.
I knew you in 4 songs or less.
"So your accent?"
He said he’s here because he likes the weather and is enjoying American culture. I told him he was cute. He countered with a shy smile and started picking at the label on his beer.
"I’m strange though."
How strange?
"Trust me. Strange. I think these dark thoughts."
"Well, you are German."
And he laughed the bright and innocent laugh of a shy boy who just got poked in the ribs by the loud, laughing girl in the class that he’s been wondering about.
It was so soon, so inappropriate – this conversation. The place, this barstool, the friend I came with and was ignoring because the cute and warm German guy with the dark thoughts is talking to me. I trust him. He’s coughed up something he’s ashamed of already. He’s warning me, testing me. Can she handle me/it/that/them? Can anyone?
So he’s taking himself too seriously too soon.
"What kind of music do you like?" I cut the moment a different way.
He said "dark, mostly electronica."
And I saw him in the paned shadows of moonlight invading his white, starkly decorated Ikea apartment. I saw him standing staring into his opened closet full of darkness and things that only he could see, things he showed no one because no one’s capable of keeping their retinas from detaching in the light of such easy and simple truths that only exist in the otherwise palatable human heart.
I loved him harder and longer and more passionately than any woman, even his mother, could in that one moment. All because he hung his head telling me about the music he loved.
"I’m strange that way."
"How strange? What’s strange?"
"Ask my friends. They’ll tell ya."
I did. And they didn’t. They were drunk. They laughed at me, and they laughed at him. They laughed at him for talking to the girl that would ask why he was strange.
The more I pressed, the more nervous he got. With an empty beer bottle in front of both of us, he crossed his arms and held himself at the bar.
"I think darkly."
"So do I," I coughed up.
He shook his head. "No, I believe in dead people."
And I felt my first wave of hot hazard. Was it because I was stuck in an unscripted M. Night Shymalan script? Was it because he wasn’t at all joking? Was it because he was German, and he would never have thrown that kind of joke around? For any number of reasons?
Hell, I talk to dead people. Every day, at work, at the gas station. Dead people, they're everywhere these days ...
"Do you talk to these people?"
He looked up at me and nodded softly. The lousy drunk karaokers squealed in the background. This freckle-faced, red-headed wide square face looked so odd shielding this shame. He was so bright and sunny on the outside.
"That’s cool."
…
He continued to hold himself tighter. His eyes began to dart ruthlessly around the bar. He feigned a distracted interested in the Lohan-alikes singing “Bloody Sunday” at the mic.
"So are those people – are they evil?" This was a test question.
"No." Simply, no.
"You’ve lost people in your life? That you’ve loved."
That soft nod again. His eyes wide open with feeling and 'is it okay?' A black hole of a pain so seductive, elusive and gorgeous in its simplicity and rarity.
I touched him on the arm. Any words would scare him away. But I wanted him to feel me, in some way, and maybe some spark of my infinite sadness scraping against his conversation with dead people would relieve him, and he’d order another beer, and we’d share more laughs and sorrows at this karaoke bar in Burbank. Burbank, California.
He drew himself away, motioned to his pals he was ready to leave. They gathered all their girls for the evening, packed them up and headed towards the door. I gave him my email because I wanted to stay in touch, send him my little book of pain when I got around to writing it, let him know he’s not alone in the dark. I shook his hand to pass my email to him.
It fell to the ground. Whatever love I had, whatever you want to call it, was laying on the grimy, sticky karaoke bar. He had criminalized my concern, my unrequited concern, by dropping it carelessly. And all of a sudden we both were in this accessory moment.
Dennis Dennis Full of Shame was danger to me now, as I was to him. I loved him until he saw it. I felt him until he felt him. I lost him just when he started to land. Something … something scared him. Was it me?
That night, Dennis Dennis Full of Shame walked out the door, into the night. He left me alone in that stupid bar in Burbank. Burbank, California.
He’s out there. I don’t know where.
I don’t know where …
I don’t know where …
I don’t know where …
But I’m out here too …
~~~
Met a German guy at a karaoke bar. Dimples. Not the German guy. The bar was named Dimples.
He sat next to me at this celeb-fave bar in Burbank. Burbank, California.
He leaned over my arm and pointed to #135 in the song list book.
"Neil Diamond, yah? 'Forever in Blue Jeans'? Yah?"
I looked up into the brightly squinted blue eyes of who I would come to know later as Dennis.
Dennis Dennis Full of Shame
That’s what I call him now.
In a German accent and stilted laugh, we took turns picking out songs for each other that we’d never sing. We threatened each other with Phoebe Snow songs, pitched our own bravado with Lynard Skynard trivia, and high-fived when we both saw Neil Young’s’ “Old Man” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at the same time.
Dennis Dennis Full of Shame.
I knew you in 4 songs or less.
"So your accent?"
He said he’s here because he likes the weather and is enjoying American culture. I told him he was cute. He countered with a shy smile and started picking at the label on his beer.
"I’m strange though."
How strange?
"Trust me. Strange. I think these dark thoughts."
"Well, you are German."
And he laughed the bright and innocent laugh of a shy boy who just got poked in the ribs by the loud, laughing girl in the class that he’s been wondering about.
It was so soon, so inappropriate – this conversation. The place, this barstool, the friend I came with and was ignoring because the cute and warm German guy with the dark thoughts is talking to me. I trust him. He’s coughed up something he’s ashamed of already. He’s warning me, testing me. Can she handle me/it/that/them? Can anyone?
So he’s taking himself too seriously too soon.
"What kind of music do you like?" I cut the moment a different way.
He said "dark, mostly electronica."
And I saw him in the paned shadows of moonlight invading his white, starkly decorated Ikea apartment. I saw him standing staring into his opened closet full of darkness and things that only he could see, things he showed no one because no one’s capable of keeping their retinas from detaching in the light of such easy and simple truths that only exist in the otherwise palatable human heart.
I loved him harder and longer and more passionately than any woman, even his mother, could in that one moment. All because he hung his head telling me about the music he loved.
"I’m strange that way."
"How strange? What’s strange?"
"Ask my friends. They’ll tell ya."
I did. And they didn’t. They were drunk. They laughed at me, and they laughed at him. They laughed at him for talking to the girl that would ask why he was strange.
The more I pressed, the more nervous he got. With an empty beer bottle in front of both of us, he crossed his arms and held himself at the bar.
"I think darkly."
"So do I," I coughed up.
He shook his head. "No, I believe in dead people."
And I felt my first wave of hot hazard. Was it because I was stuck in an unscripted M. Night Shymalan script? Was it because he wasn’t at all joking? Was it because he was German, and he would never have thrown that kind of joke around? For any number of reasons?
Hell, I talk to dead people. Every day, at work, at the gas station. Dead people, they're everywhere these days ...
"Do you talk to these people?"
He looked up at me and nodded softly. The lousy drunk karaokers squealed in the background. This freckle-faced, red-headed wide square face looked so odd shielding this shame. He was so bright and sunny on the outside.
"That’s cool."
…
He continued to hold himself tighter. His eyes began to dart ruthlessly around the bar. He feigned a distracted interested in the Lohan-alikes singing “Bloody Sunday” at the mic.
"So are those people – are they evil?" This was a test question.
"No." Simply, no.
"You’ve lost people in your life? That you’ve loved."
That soft nod again. His eyes wide open with feeling and 'is it okay?' A black hole of a pain so seductive, elusive and gorgeous in its simplicity and rarity.
I touched him on the arm. Any words would scare him away. But I wanted him to feel me, in some way, and maybe some spark of my infinite sadness scraping against his conversation with dead people would relieve him, and he’d order another beer, and we’d share more laughs and sorrows at this karaoke bar in Burbank. Burbank, California.
He drew himself away, motioned to his pals he was ready to leave. They gathered all their girls for the evening, packed them up and headed towards the door. I gave him my email because I wanted to stay in touch, send him my little book of pain when I got around to writing it, let him know he’s not alone in the dark. I shook his hand to pass my email to him.
It fell to the ground. Whatever love I had, whatever you want to call it, was laying on the grimy, sticky karaoke bar. He had criminalized my concern, my unrequited concern, by dropping it carelessly. And all of a sudden we both were in this accessory moment.
Dennis Dennis Full of Shame was danger to me now, as I was to him. I loved him until he saw it. I felt him until he felt him. I lost him just when he started to land. Something … something scared him. Was it me?
That night, Dennis Dennis Full of Shame walked out the door, into the night. He left me alone in that stupid bar in Burbank. Burbank, California.
He’s out there. I don’t know where.
I don’t know where …
I don’t know where …
I don’t know where …
But I’m out here too …
~~~
Who's Sad in America?
CHERYL LORENZ is.
Nancy is, too. Edward, maybe so, in a different way than Nancy, in a different way than Cheryl.
But Cheryl … Cheryl is the one whose name appears in all the eulogized newspaper articles. She’s taking the phonecalls, she’s making quotes. She’s bearing the responsibility of the end.
This week, the children of Dr. Chaos lost their father.
We will never know if Cheryl and he had a good relationship or not. Dads and Daughters … opposing ends of the familial spectrum in age, in sex, in viewpoints of the world.
And yet, both define each other’s intake of all things. A daughter’s sense of protection, stillness and strength come from her father. A daughter’s sense of humor comes in her father’s ability to present a stable or instable world for her. A dad’s understanding and sense of beauty, delicacy, place in society and social grace comes from his daughter’s genetic predisposition to care about such petty things. And a dad’s fragility is held tight in the soft palm of his daughter’s happiness.
A scientist’s daughter? A Daughter of Dr. Chaos? Well, one can only speculate what twists and turns their relationship have taken in the storm of familial weather patterns.
But since Tuesday, April 16, I’ve wondered about her. Cheryl. She’s the only one interviewed about the loss of the man at chaos' horizon. I’m assuming she’s the one calling the mortuary, calling the lawyers, receiving perfunctory notes of condolence – some polite, some political, some passionate – from his colleagues, protégés and adversaries. She’s survived him and his patterns, like Nancy and Edward, but she’s the one the scribes are quoting in the face of the end of her own particular chaos.
Eh, chaos never ends, really - it just begins again. But the man who started explaining that cycle to us - that Brazilian butterfly’s flap provoking a Texas tornado - is gone. His brain, his hope, his spirit, his future discoveries and philosophies, his unending quest to contain and predict the unpredictable – it’s gone. With the finite nature of this human constraint, there’s only irony left in this man’s disappearing act. Will he be buried? Will he be cremated? Will his atoms, protons, dormant viruses, cells be tossed into the winds of today, only to bring about the stolid knowing of one young scientist in 25 years that explains why we need to make sense out of chaos? Will his cells find a way to describe our need to storytell, mythologize and theologize the meaning in the meaningless? In my mind, there’s just no sense / no order / only chaos in losing a man who set into motion a path of conviction that could only serve to bring us to a global resolve of change. Sure, there are his students and followers. But the man is gone.
What’s left is his residue. What Cheryl’s left with … what damage, what growth patterns, what papers books and things left unsaid and world-changing things written. She and her siblings are the ones cleaning up after his tornado blew through their hallways, bedroom, late-night kitchen snacks or studies. And we're all left with a choice of carrying on for him or because of him.
A daughter’s loss of dad is a messy thing. I’m sure her middle-aged tears don’t make sense to her, if she indeed does cry for him. My own sadness for this NPR report that stopped me in my tracks - doesn't make sense to me, either. But then again, a complicated mourning of a lost relationship with a man driven by something inexplicable – that I know. And that’s probably the reason I’ve felt for their family this week, more than perhaps a stranger should.
The loss of Father Chaos. Creationists won’t miss him. Farmers won’t, either - they’ve been predicting weather for centuries – nothing new under their sun that he wrote papers about. His Ivy League buddies might. Meterologists will. Science won’t because he’s not vogue anymore.
But Cheryl will, good relationship or bad. When the man who explained chaos to you as a child dies, all sense in the world goes with him.
And as I write this, at 12:20pm on Sunday, April 20, 2008, the family, the followers and the others prepare to gather for the memorial service in Cambridge, Mass., for a man that prompted us as well to make some sense of the world for a brief time in the 20th century. As the weather changes, a traditional storm’s intensity compounds, and the ice caps melt into our souls’ histories, we are left with Chaos’ daughter, Complexity.
... it just never ends ...
For all daughters who have lost their fathers to science, or to love mis-expressed, or to tragedy, or to nature. This is for them …
~~~
Photo is Argentina's Gerogina Bardach during the women's 200m butterfly qualifiers of the South American Aquatics Championship, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on March 14, 2008. Courtesy of MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images.
Nancy is, too. Edward, maybe so, in a different way than Nancy, in a different way than Cheryl.
But Cheryl … Cheryl is the one whose name appears in all the eulogized newspaper articles. She’s taking the phonecalls, she’s making quotes. She’s bearing the responsibility of the end.
This week, the children of Dr. Chaos lost their father.
We will never know if Cheryl and he had a good relationship or not. Dads and Daughters … opposing ends of the familial spectrum in age, in sex, in viewpoints of the world.
And yet, both define each other’s intake of all things. A daughter’s sense of protection, stillness and strength come from her father. A daughter’s sense of humor comes in her father’s ability to present a stable or instable world for her. A dad’s understanding and sense of beauty, delicacy, place in society and social grace comes from his daughter’s genetic predisposition to care about such petty things. And a dad’s fragility is held tight in the soft palm of his daughter’s happiness.
A scientist’s daughter? A Daughter of Dr. Chaos? Well, one can only speculate what twists and turns their relationship have taken in the storm of familial weather patterns.
But since Tuesday, April 16, I’ve wondered about her. Cheryl. She’s the only one interviewed about the loss of the man at chaos' horizon. I’m assuming she’s the one calling the mortuary, calling the lawyers, receiving perfunctory notes of condolence – some polite, some political, some passionate – from his colleagues, protégés and adversaries. She’s survived him and his patterns, like Nancy and Edward, but she’s the one the scribes are quoting in the face of the end of her own particular chaos.
Eh, chaos never ends, really - it just begins again. But the man who started explaining that cycle to us - that Brazilian butterfly’s flap provoking a Texas tornado - is gone. His brain, his hope, his spirit, his future discoveries and philosophies, his unending quest to contain and predict the unpredictable – it’s gone. With the finite nature of this human constraint, there’s only irony left in this man’s disappearing act. Will he be buried? Will he be cremated? Will his atoms, protons, dormant viruses, cells be tossed into the winds of today, only to bring about the stolid knowing of one young scientist in 25 years that explains why we need to make sense out of chaos? Will his cells find a way to describe our need to storytell, mythologize and theologize the meaning in the meaningless? In my mind, there’s just no sense / no order / only chaos in losing a man who set into motion a path of conviction that could only serve to bring us to a global resolve of change. Sure, there are his students and followers. But the man is gone.
What’s left is his residue. What Cheryl’s left with … what damage, what growth patterns, what papers books and things left unsaid and world-changing things written. She and her siblings are the ones cleaning up after his tornado blew through their hallways, bedroom, late-night kitchen snacks or studies. And we're all left with a choice of carrying on for him or because of him.
A daughter’s loss of dad is a messy thing. I’m sure her middle-aged tears don’t make sense to her, if she indeed does cry for him. My own sadness for this NPR report that stopped me in my tracks - doesn't make sense to me, either. But then again, a complicated mourning of a lost relationship with a man driven by something inexplicable – that I know. And that’s probably the reason I’ve felt for their family this week, more than perhaps a stranger should.
The loss of Father Chaos. Creationists won’t miss him. Farmers won’t, either - they’ve been predicting weather for centuries – nothing new under their sun that he wrote papers about. His Ivy League buddies might. Meterologists will. Science won’t because he’s not vogue anymore.
But Cheryl will, good relationship or bad. When the man who explained chaos to you as a child dies, all sense in the world goes with him.
And as I write this, at 12:20pm on Sunday, April 20, 2008, the family, the followers and the others prepare to gather for the memorial service in Cambridge, Mass., for a man that prompted us as well to make some sense of the world for a brief time in the 20th century. As the weather changes, a traditional storm’s intensity compounds, and the ice caps melt into our souls’ histories, we are left with Chaos’ daughter, Complexity.
... it just never ends ...
For all daughters who have lost their fathers to science, or to love mis-expressed, or to tragedy, or to nature. This is for them …
~~~
Photo is Argentina's Gerogina Bardach during the women's 200m butterfly qualifiers of the South American Aquatics Championship, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on March 14, 2008. Courtesy of MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images.
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