July 24, 2001

  • In Loving Memory of Wildheart…


    “I wanted nothing to do with life until I was forced to face death.”
           Posted 1/1/2001 at 12:59 pm by Wildheart


    The above comment was the first on my first post of the new year, which is reprinted at the bottom below.


    Wildheart was a warrior who took to Xanga like a wilderness and helped to make it a worthy place to wander in.  Before things “settled down” (never!) here on the blog, Wildheart could always be counted on to be in the fray and at the heart of controversy.  Whether it was drawing a line in The eProp Wars (whether eProps or comments were worthier) , getting a read on the Overall Popularity Ranking controversies (bloggers were intitially featured by the week on how many overall eProps they had received for the week—not daily by any particular blog) , or exposing the Bianca spam, Wildheart could be counted on to arrive on the scene with a bullshit-slaying sword in her hand.


    Yet, ongoing too, was her battle for personal survival, her reoccurring bout with cancer, which she fully here (in Xanga) shared.  She embraced the letdown to the disease’s ravagings both through depictions of graphic suffering and despair and spiritual triumph through personal transcendence.  I was here moved by her display of strength and intrepidness, inspired by her untamable (Wild) intellect,  and comforted by her embracing vision (Heart) of Eternity.  Some of you may remember her “trademark”  signature  *l*   which she would leave besides her comments.  I always wondered what it meant.  Bright eyes, I imagined.  Bright, fiery eyes projecting the firestorm of a beautiful spirit.


    I imagine over the next couple of days that many more of us will have memories and observance of Wildheart.  The blogs that I’ve come upon so far include (no order) those of JadedFey, loopdeloup, Prometheus, toreibjo, celeste, ryans_mom, JDMoore, SuperSonicSunny, Your_Conscience, barney, TewSmart4U, Losing2gether, litboiler, Jewels, Lady_Roxy, kazual, SirThorn, nash, Skywater, beckerbuns, gholmes, and Kiersten.


    Here now is the reprint of my January 1st post to which Wildheart responded with the comment at the top of the page.  I did not know her as Diane Elizabeth King until today.


    “Today is a good day to die!”


    daily morning prayer of Crazy Horse, 19th century warrior.


    1) Rumi, a 16th –17th century Sufi (Persian) poet observed: “No one knows your real name until your very last breath.”


    2) Schwelgien, a 21st century American non-poet has further observed: “The process of your birth finds no surcease until your very last breath.”


    3) Furthermore, the process of your death commenced with your very first breath.


    4) There is only birth and death. The common perception that birth and death are discrete entry/exit terminals with a segment of life (lifespan) “in between” is misleading. Birth shades into death as death shades into birth. Any segregative distinctions are superfluous.


    5) If one views life as something sandwiched “in between” discrete dichotomies of birth and death, then one is apt to consider as the foremost practical issues: “What do I do with my life?”, “What am I to make of myself?”, and “How am I to make a living?” In other words, one encounters the difficulty of what to do with the “intervening” segment of time. If death is seen as something inevitably awaiting us, the issue is: "What can (should) we do while we wait?"


    6) If, however, one understands life as the ever-developing and interacting processes of both birth and death, then no “intervening” undefined state arises. One is always being born to some degree (a logically fuzzy birth) and is always dying to some degree (a logically fuzzy death). And naught else.


    7) Hence, life is never the matter of fill-in-the-blank. Destiny is always occurring. “Life is much too busy being everything to seem anything--catastrophic included,” 20th century, e.e. cummings.


    8) Death in the common perception is merely a spectator sport. Everyone watches “the event.” Even the person dying, if conscious, is sometimes inclined to observe “the event.” “I don’t want to die!” is then the lament. As if there were another choice! As if one hasn’t been dying from one’s first breath!


    9) Death is truly experienced as a unique process--no fingerprint, no snowflake is as individual as each and every one of our deaths. Yet we never die alone. Which amounts to saying that no one lives your life but you, yet you never live alone. "No man is an island," 17th century, John Donne.


    10) Gossip assumes the pretense of knowing someone’s real name before their last breath. In this light, gossip is seen as a form of societal hyperventilation.


    11) Death always shames those who gossip. People who gossip live in secret shame because death makes gossip infamous. Who dare gossips about the dead without dread of recrimination?


    12) Hence, gossip is the deathcast in the spectator sport of life. Woe on he or she who lives watching death and dies watching life--by proxy through gossip--without ever fully living and dying themselves. As Merton, 20th century mystic-monk, made out: there are “those who hide in the shadow of an answer to a question they are afraid to ask.”


    13) Kerouac, a 20th century American poet/writer observed: “There is only the Golden Eternity.”


    14) There is only our Golden Eternity.

Comments (234)

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment

notforprophet

Recent Posts

Categories

The End of Days