Terrorized in My Own Home

That's right, I've been harassed in my own home for quite some time. He (or she, I don't know) will come out of nowhere, bringing an unknown source of wrath and fury. I cover my face for protection, but He is too fast. I'm like a dumb animal against His anger. Up until now He has done no harm but I can't take those chances anymore. I have to kill him.

Don't let His small size fool you; I've looked into His eyes and seen pure negative hatred juice. It's boiling in there. 

In all honesty the moth is more of a nuisance than a threat to my life. It's like Zsa Zsa Gabor; hiding from everyone for the most part but occasionally flying out of the abyss to get in your face. I think the reason I dislike moths so much is because they do fly in my face all the time. At least bees have the courtesy to buzz around you. Ladybugs are downright genteel. But moths, moths are trashy. 

Did you know that the reason moths fly into lights is because they use the light of the moon to navigate? In a natural setting like a forest the moon would be a predictable distance away. The moth somehow determines the angle of itself with the moon to fly up and in a good manner. In our artificial world, however, the moth calculates incorrectly and ends up bursting into flames. It's a small margin of error. 

Luckily I have Rocky to deal with the moth. Apart from being the cutest kitten on the face of FSM's green earth, he's a tough son-of-a-gun and is willing to kill the damn moth. He is my neighbor and periodically visits us. All he asks in return is to be pet behind the ears and to occasionally be allowed to attack my hand. Seems reasonable. 

I hate bugs in my apartment, but it's so much cooler with the windows down. 

I almost forgot about her. And I particularly like this picture...actually, you should just go to the gallery and look at all the pictures. 

Podcastle review: Come Lady Death

The much heralded Podcastle has finally come into being. This is the third tentacle of Stephen Eley's wonderful literary beast (the other two being Escape Pod and Pseudopod) and it appears to be as good as the others. I will admit that I was not as excited about this newest podcast as others have appeared to be. Hearing the first episode, however, has changed that. 

The story for the first week was Come Lady Death by Peter S. Beagle. Although I cannot explicitly recall reading this story before, the plot seemed familiar. I think it is a story that has been floating around in the collective consciousness of short story readers long enough to be leaked out every so often. I won't review the story itself much, but I do want to talk about the concepts later. I thought the plot was conventional, but in the comforting fairy tale sort of way. 

The story pivots around several social mores, mostly concerning the dangerous and yet enchanting power of death. Death seems to be portrayed in fiction in a wide variety of ways: as bony skeletons, beautiful women, tallish men with wavy hair (a la Touched by an Angel) and each portrayal always has different personality characteristics, like a calm, comforting, or even menacing behavior. Why is the figure of death so self-contradicting? God is generally portrayed in a uniform fashion, as is Mother Nature, the Devil and other supernatural beings.

I think the lack of clarity regarding Death's nature is because of the intense mysteriousness of Death. You can pray to God, or the Devil, and commune with Mother Nature, but how do you connect with Death? By dying. And, unfortunately, dying usually carries the requirement of passing away from this world. Everyone who knows something about Death can't talk. 

That's why ghosts, demons, and Death itself get created in fiction; to act like messengers from the least well-known place. They fill in much desired information. They clarify Death. But, because they are in fictional stories they are written by humans, not ghosts or demons. They therefore tend to reflect more what the writer thinks about Death than what Death thinks about itself. That's where all of the contradicting characteristics of Death arise. 

Come Lady Death provides one scenario for Death entering our world. I like to think of the mantle of Death being handed down from one person to the next over the centuries. I think the REAL interesting thing will be to see if any of our ideas about Death are true when it actually comes.

Note: I just noticed that I posted two entries about death in a row. I'm not obsessed. It's just a coincidence.  

The Dead Man's Plants

I had this excuse that I couldn't write in here if nothing interesting happened in my life. This worked until now. I've got many things to write about. 

Someone killed himself in my apartment building a few months ago. I was at work when it happened.  I received a torrent of text messages. They all asked me if I was okay and where I was and if I had been taken hostage. It shocked me to receive them, and I was completely confused. I learned from my roommate that someone had taken himself hostage in the apartment building. The entire building had been vacated and police had blockaded the street. 

I was relieved that my roommate was not in danger, but I wondered who the hostage was. I only know a few people in the building and I couldn't imagine any of them doing something like this. About an hour before I was leaving to come home (or as near to it as I could get) I received news that the man had killed himself. 

It was hard for me to feel anything but confusion. Everything had happened very fast. When I learned that the man who had died wasn't someone I knew I felt further relieve. It was the kind of relief you get when you know you have no connection to the problem. But I knew someone else must have been horrified by the news. 

When I got home the scene was quite calm. The place felt very eery. Broken glass glittered on the asphalt underneath the apartment and a chair held open the back door. There was no one around. As I looked up into the apartment where he had died, it looked very dark. It looked empty, vacant. 

It has been odd how quickly the man's death has been rolled over by time. The next day someone came to clean the apartment (which must have been awful; he killed himself with a shotgun) and the apartment is now for rent. I don't know if the owner is required to disclose the death at all to prospective tenants. These things made me feel like this man's death was inconsequential. We all live the same lives here that we did before. Someone will move in, put up pictures and arrange furniture, and they will probably never know about the death. I guess I'm forgetting the man's family, they probably think about his death, but I wonder how long it'll take before they forget too. 

The man killed himself because he violated parole and didn't want to go back to prison. He was a sex offender. He wasn't dying for any noble cause, and he wasn't a victim. He died because he thought it was better than living. Maybe he wanted to be forgotten.