By Beauty Damned

Wiping the Dust Away

It's always so hard to know where to begin, whether a blog or journal entry, or a thing that might actually change your life. Where to begin...

Well, there is certainly no shortage of intriguing news, but everyone knows about all that stuff, right? I don't have to tell you about Virginia State (why are news outlets showing pictures and videos of this murderer acting like he is a badass, waving his guns around?); or the race/gender uproar since Don Imus's verbal diarrhea (almost to be considered a positive event if it happens to end up bringing the myriad issues of race and gender to our social consciousness to be dealt with); or Alberto Gonzales testifying under oath about the US Attorney firing scandal (whatever "oath" means to him, I'm sure that he's got his fingers crossed behind his back and he's already written a legal brief which pre-exonerates him for perjury by executive power and discretion of the president almighty). The media continues to be cunty, Oprah continues to hold panels, and our government continues with its lies and corruption. All is right in the world.

But in the one part of the news that actually brought me joy today, it's sunny in Brooklyn and it's Friday. Fridays are good, even for a person who doesn't have a real job, but the sunshine is what is truly momentous. I hope it doesn't go away too soon.

Okay, so I said it. I don't have a real job. Not anymore. I gave it away, and it was the most liberating thing I've ever done. Being a legal secretary had become such an ingrained part of my identity that leaving it has given me the opportunity to have a different identity - one that I like better.

I spend my days studying for and attending classes, writing stories and poems, emailing with people who are important to me, taking care of minor business, and not least of all, mourning my brother Josh.

I think about Josh everyday. I look at pictures of him and his artwork everyday. Everything reminds me of him. I am wearing one of his black hooded sweatshirts as I write this. His words and his art are the doctrines and the powers that propel me. He has become a god to me. I dream of him, and sometimes they are happy dreams where he still lives and we are together and sometimes they are terrible dreams where he dies in my own arms. He gives me the greatest strength I've ever known, while at the same time, I am experiencing a magnitude of grief that feels like all of the loss I've ever faced, combined and concentrated into one impenetrable thing.

Eloise
Diane
Tyler
Nick
Petie
Jimmy
Ivette
Howard

JOSHUA

Losing him feels like losing everyone at once. Everyone and everything. And being given something else in its place. Something that I'm still learning from and figuring out and processing constantly.

It has been very difficult to write about losing Josh because no words can do justice to the way it feels. I think a huge part of me is still in a state of shock and disbelief, even with the proof that I've seen and the truth that I know. A huge part of me just can't accept that this happened. The other part of me knows that I have no choice. The reality of death is unwavering. It always has been. Since I was four, I have felt it there, I have known its presence and realized its inevitability. Now it has become like an old, familiar specter that sweeps in and out, always taking someone that I love with it. And one day, it will be me sweeping through that doorway in its clutches. And you. Sorry.

Another level to it is how private mourning is. It is so true that everyone deals with death in their own way. For me, it's been very hard to say exactly what happened, even out loud, but especially on the internet. I still don't feel that humanity is palpable enough here to support delicate grief and sadness. Perhaps the web is still too cold to convey real life, and death is just one more novelty. But I'd like not to believe that.

My sister has done a couple of beautiful websites commemorating Joshua's life and work. Please visit them:

joshlove dot blogspot dot com

and

http://picasaweb.google.com/dreampretty/JoshLove

Let him touch your heart and your mind. He had extraordinary gifts and great moral and internal strength and fortitude. I am changed by the principles that he lived by and the genius that he left behind.

So do not speak today, nor tomorrow, or the next.
Contemplate a maze, then a painting, then a puzzle of glass convex.
All at once, you will see all of the pieces connect.
The drawbridge will be opened for you, then.
And you must then depart.
Carrying the truth in your possession.
It is your life's dependence.
It will be your art.

-Joshua Carreón, "Mother to Son"

P.S. Happy Four-Twenty all you stoner blackbirds. Smoke a good one for Josh.

Posted by Maria at April 20, 2007 12:58 PM | TrackBack