A Handful Of Anguish

Tucked in what seemed to be an innocuous chapter of a book I'm currently reading is an intriguing proposition on sorrow and its implications/correlations to art. I will probably revisit it with a corresponding blog post but considering my inadequacy with finding proper words I will probably not overreach and promise it will happen.

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Speaking of sorrow here's a few flashes of it this week:

01. GONE TOO SOON. We photographed a very young (24 years old), brilliant executive for a corporate publication we have been working on some months back. Today I learned he passed away due to colon cancer and I was quite stunned. Looking at his frozen image onscreen I was close to denial and disbelief: he looked so active and full of life and the glint in the eyes can be decoded as "I'll do so many great things!"

02. GONE PEACEFULLY. GONE FOREVER. A friend's father passed away due to liver cancer. At the wake I was told he closed his eyes without preamble - no last words, no painful moans, no nothing and was gone.

03. EXTINGUISHED ASPIRATION. A distressed friend sidled up to me during a business summit and told me that a young man, her (and her husband's) college scholar decided to quit his pre-Medicine to shit to liberal arts course and it cased her so much anxiety. She genuinely wanted the young man to succeed but the illogical manners of the young compounds the betrayal and wasted opportunity.

04. HE CALLS HIMSELF PHOENIX. Someone in my Facebook network bleeds in pixels. He recounts a failed relationship, getting retrenched at work without valid reason and due process, among other shades of anguish.

05. DIGITAL DIARY VANISHES. Blogs make us live vicariously through other people's experiences, they make us see different perspectives and probe their thoughts for something alien or recognizable. One of the thoughtful travel blogs I was lurking on vanished today.

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The movie Dark City argues that we are our memories. If we erase our memory we will have no sense of self, no sense of identity.

I remembered it today while humming Sting's "Fragile" off-key.