Again

I've heard it said before that people only take the time to write when they don't feel happy, because when you feel happy you're too caught up in the experience of happiness to want to take the time out to write it all down. And certainly, when you're enjoying yourself, why would you want to take yourself away from the moment to make a record that may not be historicly relevant in the larger scheme of things anyway? And that's why I haven't been writing: ever since school started, I've been unbelievably happy. Interesting (yes, interesting) classes with engaging readings, long meals with good conversations, old friends reunited and catching up again, steamboats and nights spent chatting over dessert made by J, a night out on the city to wach the Miami City Ballet's breathtaking performance, random long walks, a random and dingy-looking diner giving us unprepossessing service, a dinner with Z and W - Ethiopian food and reflections on the richness of the city and the films that are waiting to be made in it, long nights, long chats, the gentleness of waking up in the morning with warmth and contentment enveloping you.

Have you ever been so happy that it scared you?

And then, this happens again. It has been precisely one month today. A worrying message on my phone, the email that sent the shock and pain of recognition shooting upwards and downwards, the sensory acuity that comes with disorientation and revelation. When you know something has happened, but you don't know who it has happened to, suddenly that message that you read becomes like a verdict, and everyone that you know who fits the description becomes a possible victim. It ismental Russian Roulette: you know that someone has paid the price, and you flip through all the people you know wondering who it is exactly. You picture each and every one of them in the dreadful situation, and because it is uncertain which one is the right one, each mental image is like a separate tragedy. Not knowing who it really was, you are forced to contemplate each possibility as if it really happened. Cognitively, then, one tragedy becomes many.

Then, there is the moment of recognition, when you know who it really is. Everyone else gets a reprieve, and there is a certain measure of relief. But it is tempered with the terrible knowledge that such relief was bought by a real, corporeal loss. And anyway, the pan that imagined losses can give you is necessarily limited, because you know that it is reall imaginary. When the separate pains from the imaginary losses congeal in the form of a real loss, the resulting pain is more than the sum of its parts. It is sharpened by being real. And you realise, too, that you know - knew - this person, that he is not som theoretical philosophical possibility, but someone whom you had talked to, worked with. Understood, even, in moments of crystal clarity. And then, with a jolt, you also realise how it could have been anyone else, too. Before, I had thought tha we were in some measure invincible, at the top of our game, immune from shocks, or rather secure in the knowledge that whatever shocks we received would not be incongruous with the context that we are in (that is to say, enjoying the chance of our lives in this university and this city). And then, something like this happens, and you realise that everyone really is not exempt from reality, that really we have not moved so far away from the old stresses and troubles that used to drag us down. That, in effect, the new world that we think we are enjoying is really just a fragile, somewhat flashier version of the old one that we thought we had left behind.

We gathered, then, the people who know - knew - this person, across the campus wherever someone was willing to open a door and offer a hug. And everyone was willing to do this. Things followed the usual (I guess it is usual) course then: expressions of shock, expressions of solidarity, tentative dips into the rivers of memory to bring back anecdotes that have been steeped in pathos by the fact of this happening. Cups of tea passed around, chocolates offered, a box of tissues steadily emptying. Anxious activity, restlessness, short self-conscious laughter that eases one pain while making another more acute.

There were, of course, moments of reenacted drama, unreal renderings of an event that still seemed unreal. We interpret the things we perceive using the models that we have, and reproduce the models in our outward reactions. That is, of course, not to say that people were insincere: that would be a total mistake. You can't measure authenticity using novelty. But there were moments when I suddenly realised that I've seen this moment before, on the silver screen, on the printed page, and while I do not question the validity of using borrowed motifs and metaphors to represent what we were currently going through, I sometimes wondered about the appropriateness of each reproduction: couldn't we have chosen a better scene in some places?

More than once, I've heard that it is sad that it takes something like this to bring everyone together, that our latent friendships have been allowed to languish until one is irretrievably lost, at which point we suddenly better appreciate the value of the others. However, I don't measure the strength of a friendship against an index of frequency of meetings. What is important is that our friendships remain strong enough that, precisely at moments like these, we can still come together despite all the intervening time. The thing is that, no matter what has happened in the meantime, we can still come together, simply be present for one another.

*

But at the same time, I see a pattern: that, whenever I get really unreservedly happy, something bad will happen to rebalance my perspective on things, to remind me that actualy, the moment of happiness is not really that far removed from a more general, ambient sadness, or at least the possibility of imminent sadness. This pattern, I think, is undoubtedly a fact of existence; life is such that happiness must always be alloyed with a degree of sadness. The danger lies in jumping from this empirical correlation to a premature causal link, namely that my happiness will cause my own sadness. That way, one's happiness becomes guilty.

I see another pattern: the shock, grief, loss, awkwardness, even the pretentiousness, are all familiar - all too familiar, fresh still in recent memory. Once again, I see people I know and care about who are hurting. And still, I see that apart from all the words and the thoughts and the sharings, the really important thing is simply presence. To share this moment with other people, not to draw attention to your own pain (which, at the same time, should not be allowed to be blown out of proportion for reasons of vanity), but to acknowledge the pain of others. And I see, once again, that above all else, other people are what's important here: the people who have to go through this, right now, and to learn from it, and to live with it.

*

I cannot speak of details: that would be grossly inappropriate. At any rate, no further information is available. I am sure, though, that eventually, those who need to know will know what they need.