Tuesday, May 25, 2010

O-

Universal donor
Ever present, available and willing
Value of none
Further, negative nothing
Anti-A, Anti-B
A misfit
Unrecognized by immunity
Invisible
Harmless to all, but all are lethal
To nothing
Less than 4% in the world
Fading
One of a kind
No compatible partners but oneself

Agreeable, sociable, optimistic
Vain and rude
Responsible, decisive, organized, objective, rule-conscious, and practical
Inbred
Must avoid pleasure-releasing substance
Self-punishment is the answer

Dairy makes me sentimental
I must keep in motion at all times
Vigorously
Draining but mandatory
Torn to extremes
Vulnerable
Ulcer-prone
Nutrition must be limited and out of the norm
Cut out, avoid, cut out, don't approach, cut out

Anyone and everyone can drain me
It's my duly
Obligation
If I don't, it follows me

I am the archetype
Insufficient of life-dependent everything

Monday, May 10, 2010

Water Cooler

This morning, as I was pulling up to work, traffic was backed up. Across the street, I saw fire trucks, police cars, a couple of emergency services trucks - all with lights gleaming, and no sirens. Up ahead, I saw an electrical repair truck with a cherry picker. I assumed that there was some kind of electrical outage or tree down - something that required emergency repair.

However, as I got closer, I noticed that the fire trucks had black and purple swags draped on the sides. And officers from different civic services in dress uniform.

A funeral.

Across the street from my office building is a funeral home. But I hadn't heard of any local fires or any rescue situations where a firefighter might have been killed, nor had I heard of any notables passing away in their old age.

I parked my car, and spoke to the security guard, asking her, who always knows the scoop, what was going on. She said it was the fireman that killed himself over the weekend. He was 30 and popular and full of life.

"What could make someone like that do such a thing?"

I nodded and said, "Yeah," and went to the elevator bank to go upstairs.

Perhaps too knowingly, I know the answer, at least in part. The security guard will never understand what could make someone "like that" do such a thing. A hero. Someone surrounded by success in a noble profession. An artist who can express himself so beautifully - surely he sees beauty in the world!

Yes, inevitably, there would have been people in his profession that he'd encountered that wouldn't make it - that would die in the fire or accident or whatever situation to which he responded. And those cases would scar him. But, would it be enough to make him hang himself?

And is being surrounded by, and even actively engaged in, positivity enough to make one think differently?

No.

I went to this young man's website. Not his Facebook, not the memorial guest book. I went to his art portfolio site. And, yes, there were murals of Spiderman and other wonderful things for schoolchildren and the community. That was all facade.

I looked at his portraits. The longing in the subjects eyes. That, in every face he captured, either on film or canvas, there was confusion. A sense of being lost. In his abstracts, there was ordered chaos, with one color line that stood out, as though it were trying to rise above to rest to find an answer, but it just got entwined in the tangle in the end.

I don't have to know him to be able to see that, yes, there clearly was something that would make him do this. I don't expect her, or most of the people in his positive bubble, to be able to see it. Or understand it.

But I get it. And it's not because he was sick. It's not because he never said anything. It's that the circles around him wouldn't see it. Look at his artwork, and ask 10 people what they see. Each will see something different. The question is, who sees what he meant you to see? Who can hear what he's trying to say, not what you want to hear? I look at his artwork, and I see several years of a single message. Yes, it's beautiful. Yes, they are portraits of other people. But the exact moment he captured, the expression, direction of their pupils, etc, that's the key 10 out of 10 people won't pick up.

Call it a gift, call it a curse, but it's the first thing I see.

He was saying "what would make him do such a thing" for as long as he was painting.

But no one was listening.