Heath Ledger is dead.
Kid was only twenty-eight years old. It's a damn shame.
I know this has likely been reiterated thousandfold all over the internetz already, and I know I don't typically ever write about actual news or events outside my own exploits, but the guy mattered to me. When I woke up, I'd already gotten three emails, two text messages, and several IMs announcing the matter. The first one I read I didn't think much of; "Heath Ledger died. What a pity." It was so nonchalant it didn't even register. Then I see the abundance of accompanying messages. My friend Luke stopped by and said he thought it was a great opportunity, a career opening. Another friend left me a message asking if I thought he could be the next Heath Ledger. I know he didn't mean to be cold, and he certainly had no clue how much this news was weighing on me.
Then there's the Wikipedia nonsense. First someone edited Heath's entry to say, "Heath Ledger found dead. Batman prime suspect." Okay, that's kinda funny. But then someone deleted his entire page and left only, ""Heathcliff Andrew Ledger is a fag who died of AIDS after fucking a cowboy." And then a friend gives me the news that some infamous Christian group behind some moreso infamous website I refuse to mention here as it'd give them more attention plans to picket Heath's funeral. Let's hope that's just another bad joke someone's propagating.
I admired Heath. There were so many movies that were palatable solely because of his presence. He was in some really good movies, too, but he was in some otherwise bad movies wherein he was the saving grace. He had that sort of gift. His Ennis Del Mar reminded me so much of my grandpa. I remember I couldn't drop my inborn drawl for the rest of the night after seeing that one. There were a lot more times he reminded me a lot of myself, or of how I hoped people saw me. I kinda always thought we'd be friends someday.
Sorry I didn't get there sooner.
Seems speculation on the grapevine is that his death had something to do with insomnia and sleep meds and the like. Accidental, not a suicide. He wasn't some troubled popstar known for reckless behavior, or some recluse who'd been out of the limelight for decades. He was a good guy, a dad, and just about as busy as an actor could ever pray to be. Makes it real hard to digest.
I remember reading an interview with him talking about how he was taking Ambien and trying to get into this whole other head space for playing the Joker, keeping this crazy journal and all. I guess that's the other thing about it all that's getting to me, knowing I've been doing the same sort of thing. Not a day goes by of late I don't take a handful of melatonin and sleeping meds and whatnot before I lay my head. And I've been living this whole waking up at sunset, bedding down 'fore sun's rise sorta lifestyle, wandering dark caves and moonlit coasts in my free time, trying to keep my head in this dark, dark space so I can write my book proper. Keep a tight hold on the tail of whatever monster's been plodding 'bout in my head and heart all this time 'til I can get it on paper.
So, yeah, I suppose he woke me up a little to the dangers of dancing with that devil. Thing is, all them times I can't sleep, the thing what gets my clockworks tinkering most often is thinking on all them ways a man might die. I don't mean like a list of modus operandi, like getting stabbed or cancer or having a giant alligator corpse fall on you from the appropriate height and crush you to death, but rather what the hell's going to happen afterward, including the possibility of Hell. I remember when I was real small I'd pray every night and let God know that I hope there's fightin' in Heaven, 'cause I just like fightin' for some reason and I wanted to be able to do it with all my friends when we got up there. I don't know, feels natural to me.
When I was a little older I started figuring that maybe whatever you most thought would happen, that'd be the case, on account of you'd make it for yourself with your own willpower. If you thought you deserved eternal torment, that's what you got. All the same the thought of dying still terrified me. My mom told me that used to be she and dad would get up at night for whatever reason and find me sitting awake on my bed, obsessing on the thought.
I've spent a lot of my life looking into all the possibilities and only as of late have I found any resolution. I know I ain't keen on the idea of reincarnation. Waking up to find myself in some other form with my past forgotten don't sit well with me none. Might as well just erase me if nothing I did is gonna matter. I'm not okay with Nothingness, for that matter. Just thinking 'bout it makes me wanna curl up in the dark. I shouldn't even have capitalized it, 'cause I'm misrepresenting it as Something.
I don't like the idea of any sort of Heaven, either. Especially if it involves omniscience. I don't ever wanna run out of things to discover. It'd be real nice if you died and woke up in some sort of Legend of Zelda adventure. I guess that's why those Nordics always appealed to me so very much. But in the hopeful case that it's something like that, do I gotta make sure I die young and strong? I don't wanna show up to the party some old cripple.
So, all things being unknown and uncertain, seems the best option is to just not die. I've been fixin' my head on the idea of cryonics a good bit. And the way medical science evolves exponentially, it's damn near possible even now to preserve human life interminably. But what if the very act of such extreme self-preservation, of defying (if there is one) God's plan and cheating death is a sin in and of itself? The biggest hubris. An act of such defiance and selfishness that it straight damns you, irredeemably? Seems to me, the longer you stay alive, the more afraid you get of dying.
Even if you do manage to pull it off, the universe itself has gotta end one of these days. What then? You're gonna be some scared as shit shell of man wishing there was someone else to hold onto when it all goes down. The Big Blip. Same holds true if there's some sorta Heaven up there where we're all gonna be sitting on clouds playing harps forever. Even Forever's got an End.
So, I can't settle my head with the idea of Forever. I can't settle with the idea of nothing. I don't wanna be a butterfly or a spirit in some newborn baby. I don't wanna see those lights go out at the End. No matter what happens, I ain't never gonna ever be okay with it.
So that's what I finally resolved: To never be okay.
I remember trying to talk to a lady friend 'bout all this one night. She listened to me ramble a bit and then told me this story 'bout a tree and a dayfly. It went something like this:
Tree is old. Tree is wicked old. Passing of days is like seconds to this tree. Less than seconds. It stands there and watches the seasons pass, feels the moon come up, the sun go down. And in the summer, there's the dayflies. They're born, and they start buzzin' around. And the tree feels real sorry for them. Tree laments to one of the dayflies about how short their lives are, and dayfly asks the tree to explain why. Tree tells the dayfly how long it's been around, how much longer it'll continue to be around, and that the dayfly's whole life isn't even a spec on that timeline. Dayfly listens, digests this, and says all's well, 'cause it sure likes flying. So it keeps flying around, feelin' the sun on it's back and smellin' the sea. And then it gets tired, and feels real heavy, and it lays down to rest, but it doesn't wake up.
I listened to all this, and I know where she was going with it. I appreciate the sentiment, and I get it, I do. "Get busy livin'." "Tell your story walkin'." Still, after she'd finished all I said to her was that it seems to me that fly wasted 3/5 of it's whole damn life talking to that asshole tree. And I still don't know what I'm gonna do about it all myself.
So, yeah Mr. Ledger. I'm real sorry to see you go, friend.
And I hope for your sake and mine that you're fightin' dragons.
- Jeremy E. Jones
Kid was only twenty-eight years old. It's a damn shame.
I know this has likely been reiterated thousandfold all over the internetz already, and I know I don't typically ever write about actual news or events outside my own exploits, but the guy mattered to me. When I woke up, I'd already gotten three emails, two text messages, and several IMs announcing the matter. The first one I read I didn't think much of; "Heath Ledger died. What a pity." It was so nonchalant it didn't even register. Then I see the abundance of accompanying messages. My friend Luke stopped by and said he thought it was a great opportunity, a career opening. Another friend left me a message asking if I thought he could be the next Heath Ledger. I know he didn't mean to be cold, and he certainly had no clue how much this news was weighing on me.
Then there's the Wikipedia nonsense. First someone edited Heath's entry to say, "Heath Ledger found dead. Batman prime suspect." Okay, that's kinda funny. But then someone deleted his entire page and left only, ""Heathcliff Andrew Ledger is a fag who died of AIDS after fucking a cowboy." And then a friend gives me the news that some infamous Christian group behind some moreso infamous website I refuse to mention here as it'd give them more attention plans to picket Heath's funeral. Let's hope that's just another bad joke someone's propagating.
I admired Heath. There were so many movies that were palatable solely because of his presence. He was in some really good movies, too, but he was in some otherwise bad movies wherein he was the saving grace. He had that sort of gift. His Ennis Del Mar reminded me so much of my grandpa. I remember I couldn't drop my inborn drawl for the rest of the night after seeing that one. There were a lot more times he reminded me a lot of myself, or of how I hoped people saw me. I kinda always thought we'd be friends someday.
Sorry I didn't get there sooner.
Seems speculation on the grapevine is that his death had something to do with insomnia and sleep meds and the like. Accidental, not a suicide. He wasn't some troubled popstar known for reckless behavior, or some recluse who'd been out of the limelight for decades. He was a good guy, a dad, and just about as busy as an actor could ever pray to be. Makes it real hard to digest.
I remember reading an interview with him talking about how he was taking Ambien and trying to get into this whole other head space for playing the Joker, keeping this crazy journal and all. I guess that's the other thing about it all that's getting to me, knowing I've been doing the same sort of thing. Not a day goes by of late I don't take a handful of melatonin and sleeping meds and whatnot before I lay my head. And I've been living this whole waking up at sunset, bedding down 'fore sun's rise sorta lifestyle, wandering dark caves and moonlit coasts in my free time, trying to keep my head in this dark, dark space so I can write my book proper. Keep a tight hold on the tail of whatever monster's been plodding 'bout in my head and heart all this time 'til I can get it on paper.
So, yeah, I suppose he woke me up a little to the dangers of dancing with that devil. Thing is, all them times I can't sleep, the thing what gets my clockworks tinkering most often is thinking on all them ways a man might die. I don't mean like a list of modus operandi, like getting stabbed or cancer or having a giant alligator corpse fall on you from the appropriate height and crush you to death, but rather what the hell's going to happen afterward, including the possibility of Hell. I remember when I was real small I'd pray every night and let God know that I hope there's fightin' in Heaven, 'cause I just like fightin' for some reason and I wanted to be able to do it with all my friends when we got up there. I don't know, feels natural to me.
When I was a little older I started figuring that maybe whatever you most thought would happen, that'd be the case, on account of you'd make it for yourself with your own willpower. If you thought you deserved eternal torment, that's what you got. All the same the thought of dying still terrified me. My mom told me that used to be she and dad would get up at night for whatever reason and find me sitting awake on my bed, obsessing on the thought.
I've spent a lot of my life looking into all the possibilities and only as of late have I found any resolution. I know I ain't keen on the idea of reincarnation. Waking up to find myself in some other form with my past forgotten don't sit well with me none. Might as well just erase me if nothing I did is gonna matter. I'm not okay with Nothingness, for that matter. Just thinking 'bout it makes me wanna curl up in the dark. I shouldn't even have capitalized it, 'cause I'm misrepresenting it as Something.
I don't like the idea of any sort of Heaven, either. Especially if it involves omniscience. I don't ever wanna run out of things to discover. It'd be real nice if you died and woke up in some sort of Legend of Zelda adventure. I guess that's why those Nordics always appealed to me so very much. But in the hopeful case that it's something like that, do I gotta make sure I die young and strong? I don't wanna show up to the party some old cripple.
So, all things being unknown and uncertain, seems the best option is to just not die. I've been fixin' my head on the idea of cryonics a good bit. And the way medical science evolves exponentially, it's damn near possible even now to preserve human life interminably. But what if the very act of such extreme self-preservation, of defying (if there is one) God's plan and cheating death is a sin in and of itself? The biggest hubris. An act of such defiance and selfishness that it straight damns you, irredeemably? Seems to me, the longer you stay alive, the more afraid you get of dying.
Even if you do manage to pull it off, the universe itself has gotta end one of these days. What then? You're gonna be some scared as shit shell of man wishing there was someone else to hold onto when it all goes down. The Big Blip. Same holds true if there's some sorta Heaven up there where we're all gonna be sitting on clouds playing harps forever. Even Forever's got an End.
So, I can't settle my head with the idea of Forever. I can't settle with the idea of nothing. I don't wanna be a butterfly or a spirit in some newborn baby. I don't wanna see those lights go out at the End. No matter what happens, I ain't never gonna ever be okay with it.
So that's what I finally resolved: To never be okay.
I remember trying to talk to a lady friend 'bout all this one night. She listened to me ramble a bit and then told me this story 'bout a tree and a dayfly. It went something like this:
Tree is old. Tree is wicked old. Passing of days is like seconds to this tree. Less than seconds. It stands there and watches the seasons pass, feels the moon come up, the sun go down. And in the summer, there's the dayflies. They're born, and they start buzzin' around. And the tree feels real sorry for them. Tree laments to one of the dayflies about how short their lives are, and dayfly asks the tree to explain why. Tree tells the dayfly how long it's been around, how much longer it'll continue to be around, and that the dayfly's whole life isn't even a spec on that timeline. Dayfly listens, digests this, and says all's well, 'cause it sure likes flying. So it keeps flying around, feelin' the sun on it's back and smellin' the sea. And then it gets tired, and feels real heavy, and it lays down to rest, but it doesn't wake up.
I listened to all this, and I know where she was going with it. I appreciate the sentiment, and I get it, I do. "Get busy livin'." "Tell your story walkin'." Still, after she'd finished all I said to her was that it seems to me that fly wasted 3/5 of it's whole damn life talking to that asshole tree. And I still don't know what I'm gonna do about it all myself.
So, yeah Mr. Ledger. I'm real sorry to see you go, friend.
And I hope for your sake and mine that you're fightin' dragons.
- Jeremy E. Jones