The downside? There's no "Dislike" button to tell Blogger that, no I don't want to see another blog about making papier-mâché pigs. Really.
When this happens, I usually go back to Gretchie's blog (the only blog I was following at the time that had the Blogger header at the top) and start all over.
So far, my adventures had taken these routes:
1. A Japanese lady who wrote about her life in a combination of English and Japanese-->a pregnant lady and her family-->a mother who had lost her child.
2. A self-employed mother who custom-made lunch bags-->a knitter who also takes on other fabric crafts-->a graphic novel artist who loves to use Winston brushes.
3. An magazine editor with a dying scooter-->a debut novelist who also promotes other people's books-->a young man living in Brooklyn-->a group of students assigned to write creative stories every week.
I followed a few of them, because they sounded interesting, and began reading through the old posts of the collab blog. Their latest (and, apparently, last--but it doesn't matter because they have hundreds upon hundreds of earlier work I want to read through one day) assignment was "Complicated."
The last author wrote:
The word “dead” echoed in my head. I could not believe what I was hearing. My poor beloved mum’s soul was under the sheet. My dad murdered her. I dared not to lift the sheet. But then I did and gave her a soft kiss on her cheek.
It leaves me wondering--what is death to each of us?
I have often written about death. In my second-to-last story on this blog, I wrote about a male protagonist who died in the end. In my other stories--stories of Nephria, where my blog's name comes from--death is a major, resonating idea. It's as if I can't write a story without having someone die, somehow.
But what is death?
Perhaps it is easier to first examine what happens after death. True, everyone has a different interpretation. I have read about the Christian view of life after death: heaven. A place where the little sins are forgiven--where people are given a new chance and a brand new hope. Mitch Albom writes, in his book, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, that heaven is a place where you find out what your life meant, both to yourself and to others. In Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, heaven is the stark opposite of Purgatory, where everyone who does not conform to the social and religious norm goes until they learn to rid themselves of their sins or until someone prays for them enough.
My youngest cousin, who lives in China, said she believes that when people die, they go to a sort of afterworld--regardless of what they've done in their lives. Once there, they start new lives--lives whose prosperity in part depends on their living relatives' propensity for burning them paper afterworld money. My grandmother still burns folded gold-paper pieces for my grandfather every April. The dying protagonist in Nŭktae ŭi yuhok asks his grandmother if reincarnation exists--if people could have a second chance at life to right the wrongs that they've committed in this life.
So many possibilities, all because of one simple event. Death.
Death, to me, is the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. I don't know if reincarnation exists, or heaven, or an afterworld, or if we will land in front of Allison Saint-Cross's doorstep, asking him to grant our last wish. I don't know what will happen.
I do know, however, that it will be the end of life as I know it. It might have different connotations for different people--dying at the hands of Peter Houghton in Nineteen Minutes or the boy next door would be different from dying at the hands of cancer or old age, and different from dying because you decided to take a knife, force your way into the apartment on the fourteenth floor, and jump off the balcony.
Death, therefore, is defined by life and by the method of death.
And yet, some lives are defined by deaths. JFK was well known for his political achievements, but he is perhaps even more well known for his assassination. Cissy Pike of Second Glance is only known because of her ghost--a figment of her inevitable death. The Yan prince of ancient Chinese history is only famous because of his attempt to kill the emperor Qin, and his death after failing his task.
Life and death obviously goes hand in hand. As I've heard from somewhere else (I can't remember exactly where), "we're never guaranteed a wake-up call the next day." But until I die, I will probably never know what it really means to die.
So I'll keep on writing my stories of Prescott slipping from his grasp of self-nobleness, of Carter fighting his way to make the impossible come true, of Rena wishing for the exact opposite of what everyone else would wish for, and amidst that, I'll keep on wondering what death really means.
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