Love And Death And The Helium Balloon Contradiction
So.
You’ve been dead 6 years. How’s being dead? I imagine it’s like being a sand castle as ocean waves wash away its edges until it's indistinguishable from the beach. Or a clown on his day off, lying on the couch and watching TV.
Are all the lost things there? Like maybe death is this cluttered toolshed filled with all gone or forgotten things. How is it? How could it possibly be?
I used to think it would be like sleep with no dreams but now I toy with a dreamier death. What I’m thinking is that consciousness is an explosion of dreams, that you and I are dreams inside other dreams, which are also inside still other dreams and so on. Inside and out get confused. So “you” die. The dream of “you” ends. But there’s something left, a you bigger than you, the dream in which you figured, that partakes in explosion.
We lively ones die nightly into dreams. Into what lively dreams do the dead retire?
I’ll be 40 in a couple days (your suicide’s proximity to my birthday was noted by the way). 40. That’s a long dream and I’m always itching to wake into another. You lived 42 years and 59 days. So how is it? How’s being dead?
I feel myself drawn to it like a helium balloon tugging toward the sky—floating through the cloudy white vapor into a blue that constantly deepens. Not always due to despair—sometimes—but often solely due to curiosity and readiness. But there’s a few hands holding my string, maintaining the subtle tension between attachment, love, and tearing off my own skin.
So I stay.
And I imagine, dream, wonder, ask, ask, and ask again. How is it? What’s it like? Is there a decent simile for not to be? And I draw lines between fucking and drinking and drugs and religion and running and selflessness, looking for seams between moments, sneaking peaks outside before the door slams shut.
And I love.
People, things, ideas, poems, memories, candy. I love to the point of vanishing, disappearing, burning to the ground. Love is the craft of building your own death. Where clutching the string of your own helium desire to float away blurs into the same thing.
Is that how it is? You’re not going to tell me, are you? That’s okay. I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll be 40 in a couple days. And my birthday is when I’m always the most sorry to have let you float away into the blue.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Reader Comments (14)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBj5v_rlXe0
Long, deep sigh. Dreams for the gone.
wish this got easier..
Dreams inside dreams inside dreams. We can't create matter so something is always something else. Except that part that makes them bigger than everything and infused into every space when they're dead. The soul maybe? We can't measure that. We'll never know until we go.
not bro hugs.
just regular-type love hugs.
here's to peace and giddy foolishness. and motherfucking sushi.
For a long time I couldn't/didn't/wouldn't understand you. Now I can. What does that mean for me?
Pam must really like you!
I hope it's a happy birthday for you. You should totally go to Vegas.
This? Perfection:
"People, things, ideas, poems, memories, candy. I love to the point of vanishing, disappearing, burning to the ground. Love is the craft of building your own death. Where clutching the string of your own helium desire to float away blurs into the same thing."
Gorgeous. And wonderful. And *you.* xoxo
Dammit Jon.
This one resonated. And hurt. 6 years and I still struggle with having to let him float away into the blue.
So in love with your words...and so very sorry for your loss.
I'm sorry for your loss. It just never gets easier, does it?
"Love is the craft of building your own death.": ahhhhh.
I read your blog through google reader and I never comment. But I truly dig what you do. Don't stop.
Every time I stop in here lately it's a death post. Which I hope means I don't stop in all that often.
Man, don't you know how much that grips me. Some times I just want to read about how you want to slice the shit out of someone, not how some one sliced the shit out of you.
And sometimes your words scare me so much that I need to look away.
Oh my.
Also, yeah.