in memoriam: robin williams (1951-2014)

it's a strange thing to feel sad about the death of a person you never met, especially so when said stranger is a celebrity. it is, perhaps, even weirder to feel like you have any sort of ability - any sort of right - to bear witness to the life of a person you don't know. and yet here i am, gutted in a totally unexpected way by robin williams' death, and ready to try to set down words that capture something of my sadness and his life.

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mostly, i suppose, the ache in my heart has something to do with watching Dead Poets Society nine years ago in a classroom across from a cornfield in lampeter. it all happened right smack dab in the middle of ordinariness, is what i'm trying to get at; i was distracted, giddy with the thought that my english teacher was ... creatively bending the rules w/r/t what we could watch in school. how was i to know that i was about to be given a huge, huge gift?

the tiny seed of a thought (that i could do poetry too) - that's what i'm talking about. which, okay, had to germinate for years and years (six years, to be precise), but: it was there waiting for the right time, nonetheless.

this is what i'm talking about; i watched this clip twice yesterday night and there were tears in my eyes by the end.

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details of robin williams' death keep trickling out into the public, and i have been uncomfortably reminded of david foster wallace's widow talking about how painful the months after his death were. "people read his autopsy report like it was great literature," she said, and the line lodged in my throat, a distasteful reminder of the way we are often voyeurs of suffering.

it is hard to understand why people like dfw and robin williams and aaron swartz and marina tsvetaeva and mark rothko and virginia woolf commit suicide. looking at their life from the outside, it is so easy to see the marvelous, larger-than-life gifts they had, and terribly easy to miss the suffering that chased after them like wolves.

mental illness. it's a thing, y'all. it doesn't discriminate, either, as someone so eloquently put in an article today. at the risk of repeating myself (i put this on facebook earlier):

"these aren't my words, but I read them recently on the internet & thought they deserved a share:

robin williams died today.

here is a list of things that robin williams was:

-funny

-sharp 

-kind 

-clever 

-and sad.

that’s important, the “and sad,” because sometimes sadness can feel like the only thing we are. it can feel all-encompassing. it can feel like the only thing anyone could possibly see, when they look at you: sad. that person is so, so, sad.

but there is always an “and.” we are never just sad. we are never only. we are always and.
we have all known people who were sad, who are sad; some of us are ourselves sad. being sad does not remove the other parts of us, though it can make them harder for us to see. when you are sad, you don’t necessarily feel like you are also funny, and sharp, and clever, and kind.

but you still are. you don’t have to feel like something to be it.

those things are written on your bones, they are woven into the fabric of your skin. sadness can feel so big, so big and overwhelming and complete, even when it is not a directed sadness. maybe especially when it is not a directed sadness, when it’s a depression that has no direct cause and nothing we can name.

sometimes the sadness is too big. people try to cut it out, or starve it out, or drink it down, or drug it silent. if this is you: i’m sorry. if this is you: you are not alone. if this is you: remember that the solution is never to give up, because you do not live in a vacuum. there are people waiting for you. there are films and songs and books and not-sadness waiting for you. i know that you don’t feel like waiting, but wait anyway.

if you need help, ask for it. here’s a link to crisis centers across the globe. (http://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres) if you live in the U.S., this is the national suicide prevention hotline: 1-800-273-8255.

robin williams died today, but the genie didn’t, and mrs. doubtfire didn’t, and peter pan didn’t. sean maquire didn’t, and professor philip brainard didn’t, and alan parrish didn’t. batty koda didn’t. john keating didn’t. you didn’t.

don’t."

(source: http://ofgeography.tumblr.com/post/94482062006/robin-williams-died-today-here-is-a-list-of).

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when i read about robin williams' suicide i thought of this tribute to dfw:

I am sad now because his words, his mind, were such a companion to me and to others, yet clearly a terrible master. I wish that I could have returned the favors he has done for me in some small way.

i wish robin williams could have understood the worlds he opened up inside of countless other human beings. i would have liked to tell him that i thought about the Dead Poets Society during the year in college that i started to think of myself as a writer. i would have liked him to know that.

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when i read about robin williams' suicide i also thought of his role as sean mcguire in Good Will Hunting. 

"It's not your fault."

mental illness, y'all. 

it's a thing.

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so - yeah. i don't know robin williams. i don't want to be a voyeur to his family's suffering. i can't really say anything about his life, or make meaning from his death. 

but i guess i can say that there are a lot of suicides that are a surprise to the people left behind, and maybe the best way to remember robin williams (and these other artists i love who also took their own life) is to say that i would always, always want to know. mental illness is not too scary for it to be spoken of, okay? i would want to know.

my blog stats say i have readers from 8 countries. i've had over 10,000 hits. who knows how many individuals have virtually visited me? 

to all you nebulous people out there, listen: if you're thinking about suicide, there are places you can turn to for help. you can leave me a comment, if you have to. we'll find someone to help you out.

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robin williams: 1951-2014. 

your life was a gift to many. 

thanks.

instructions on beating a summer headcold: 1. drink tea 2. lay very still after work 3. blog

i've been listening to anais mitchell a lot, recently - often the child ballads, but i have her album The Brightness in my car and i've been doing a bit more driving than usual, recently.

there's a few lines in the last song on that album that always punch me in the gut a little when i hear it:

you can hold her hand
you can kiss her face
go slow if you can
cause the world is a very sad place
and when she leaves she'll leave no trace
and the world will still be there

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i've fallen victim to one of those horrid summer headcolds, so i know i'm already prone to be in a down mood anyway. but: the world feels a very sad place, right now.

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people on my facebook keep talking about a girl from L-S who was killed in a car wreck this week. she was just a month or so out from graduating high school, all ready to go away to college. and now she's not, and that's that.

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sometimes i see headlines about syria, or israel, or the west bank, or the gaza strip, and i just can't open the articles. i can't make myself read them. other times i read them and just feel very heavy and tired.

i happened to see pictures, this week, of the crowds teetering on the edge of riots in east jerusalem; streets i could have walked on, maybe, the jerusalem stone familiar in the photos; streets now full of anger and bitterness and the stench of hate. israeli teens: murdered. palestinian teens: murdered in retaliation. stones thrown.

i happened to see pictures, this week, of parents running with small children in their arms down the streets of gaza city, smoke billowing up in the background.

the spirit groans.

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a couple from my university is traveling - soon, very soon, in their orientation even now - to iraq, for three years. it is hard not to be afraid.

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and yet the world is still there, somehow, despite it all.

like: holding two very small humans this past weekend; twin baby girls born into a home fairly shimmering with love for the created earth.

like: getting letters in the mail from old friends.

like: a weekend with my family, camped out in the backyard.

and like this:

To love is to feel your death
given to you like a sentence,
to meet the judge's eyes
as if there were a judge,
as if he had eyes,
and love.

and like this:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

and like this:

 Surely I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.

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the world is a very sad place. but headed, i hope - i believe (help me with my unbelief) - for redemption. 

what I think about during my day

today at work i had the skeleton of a story visit me. magical realism + the ghost of anna akhmatova + teenage sisters who think they know everything.


... if only i had, like, four more hours in my day ... i would totally write it. 

poem for a weekend evening

You Reading This, Be Ready
by William Stafford

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. The interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

i survived!

my pod meeting was this morning, which involved talking about my research project in front of all the people from my pod at work (7+ labs invited). so scary - my heart was pounding, and I felt very sweaty and gross. fear has a good way of reminding me of my body, of how I am not just a brain. anyway. I did it, and it was fine, and afterwards one of my mentors said to me: you should be very proud of yourself.

I'll take that, & call it a success. :)


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in other news, the thunderstorm tonight was nice to listen to from the peacefulness of my apartment. 

sunday evening contentedness

is there anything better than a thoroughly cleaned room?

evening light through many windows?

in-tune guitars?

...yeah, I'd say it's a pretty good life.

the Mennonite bubble

breakfast today with a not-even-that-close friend from EMU was reminding me about how it felt to spend four years tucked securely inside the "Mennonite bubble."

it's been somewhat surprising to me that over the past year I haven't felt all that nostalgic for being in college. I do miss how intense everything felt, all the time; how alive and awake my brain felt, jumping from organic chemistry to a close reading of Paradise Lost, from human physiology to investigating the links between language and religion. but when I graduated from EMU, I knew even then that I had taken all that I could from my four years there. I had grown and changed and been set on a path, and the only thing to do was keep walking. like I wrote at the time, I was ready to do, to try, to see if I could make it, out in the real world, outside of the boundaries of my tiny, safe school.

"This field is getting too small," she said.
"Don't you know anyone else
To fall in love with?"

 -Robert Bly, "Conversations With The Soul"

that's kind of how it was, I guess - EMU felt large & spacious when I was 18 years old, and in the course of four years it grew smaller and smaller as I grew larger. maybe the simple way to say it is just this: I outgrew being a student.

that being said, though - I am missing being part of a community that speaks the same language, that cares about the same things I care about, that understands the identity that I have been growing into. I did not outgrow my church- and friend- and intellectual-communities in the same way that I outgrew the institution of EMU, and I think that is why I miss Harrisonburg so much.

and so. breakfast, this morning. a tiny ache in the heart: all the people I miss, all the conversations I haven't been having. I miss how easy the art of conversation was with people at EMU, how quickly we could jump between things like: young-adult Mennonite identity, work with MCC & what it means, the theology of different churches we've attended, professors we all know, places we've all been.

I want to belong to a community again, one that speaks this language. I don't know how long it will be until I end up in such a place, but I am going to do my best to steer myself in that direction.