It is true

I just spoke to the sister of "my muse" for the first time. The impossible to grasp thing really is did happen, she truely has passed away, she died in her sleep in early May, peacefully but with no warning and no explanation. It is impossible to comprehend. Far from my interpretations, her sister has a much simpler explanation that following the heartbreak of losing her beloved father 3 years before she finally gave up.

It fills me with deep regret that I was not there for her in those years. No-one gives into death that easily and her fathers death must have been a truely profound loss. I always thought she was happy, i never realised that she would ever be unhappy. I misread the signs, ignored my hearts most empassioned calls to reach out to her, not that it would have made any difference, but i saw everything wrong and did the wrong thing. i need to go very deep to forgive myself that.

I looked back over my photo collection to find that day. I remember it now, my ex and me went to the gardens here at the university to photograph the flowers. It was a wonderful day and the blossoms and flowers filled the air with frangrance and colour. After having forgotten to visit the garden the year before I was determined to make the most of this brief ephemeral display and with the new camera record it. I had timelapse photos of the blossoms coming out on one branch and 11 days before had taken a video of a daffodil which was later to become part of an art work. The introduction read:

"For its intended effect this audio/video should be viewed in the knowledge that in all the universe this daffodil flower no longer exists, and its permanent loss only goes to emphasise what a remarcable beauty it had at 4.11pm on 23rd April 2006."

the poignancy of that brings uncontrollable tears to my eyes. what a remarcable beauty she had...

11 days later she would have departed this world and left her sister and mother to fill the days that followed. Unknowing i filled the day with pictures and videos of flowers and pondered this issue of change and temporariness. A picture from the garden taken by my ex has me strolling through the arboretum of cherry blossoms looking very thoughtful. I remember it, and wish i could remember what I was thinking. It was a dark day for me I remember, heavy with thoughts and with a heavy heart but i can't remember why. I was not happy. Why it seems inportant to go back to that day and relive it I don't understand but it is helping me put all this together.

I have cried properly for the first about all this. The knowing it is true, the ridding of all the fantasies and artifice has left a deep and cold void. I see that all the time we spent together, all the dreams, all the fun and happiness has been washed away by a steely cold hand. Death leaves no explanation, no apology, we are powerless against him and when he takes he takes swiftly and leaves nothing. That nothing is very profound at the moment. It is cold and heartless. My life upto now has been no better than a child playing on a beach, writing stories about being triumphant over death, writing them in the sand, my sand castles, the palaces where the princes will live and win the hands of maidens, the places where things end happily - all of these elaborate artifices destroyed as the waves come crashing in and I am left crying despairingly to the sea as my hard labours are crushed piteously and layed flat. There is no father to run into the arms of here, no father who will tell me we can rebuilt them tomorrow, or who can save the day with a spade and dig a channel to protect the kingdom. As the waves wash around my feet and the walls tumble and disintegrate let me know that this is the true world and everything I have thought to this day has been a lie.

It is unbearably painful to know this. If this is a moment of awareness it is not blissful - it is cold and hard, uncaring and leaves a world in which i cannot imagine there is any joy. Everything I believed in has been washed away, everything around me, everything I am, everything I will believe in is just to be washed away. The brutal waves of time obliterating everything.

My whole life I have held a deep pathos for time. I have few pictures of people because as i child I could not bear to look at time gone by and see the happiness having left me. So much sadness as a child seeing wonderful days crashing away into memory, friends having to go. Someone I hardly knew left school for Holland. I cried myself to sleep because i realised that time had taken him, even tho I never even knew him. It was this poignancy of time, its unavoidable power to rob us of everything which had me so sorrowful. Pictures are of no help, they just remind us of what has gone, they just sweeten the pain of times passing. I have a picture of Exeter on a walk, which was taken while I was in crying very deeply. Again the sadness of a days rest, a day of happiness and relaxation gone, and that "going" that accompanies everything filled my whole being - everything is going. My father has gone, Reena has gone, I will go, the whole world will go - just sand castles on a beach.

i wonder if in past lives I have been tortued by this. Maybe this is why she ment so much to me, maybe this is why i wrote to her of battles with death, maybe the wheel is turning and this loss will live on to other lives. I regret so much not being there for her when she needed it, damn my ignorance and seeing things the wrong way. Self indulgent jealousies, worrying about what I didn't have, the physical when obviously i should have pursued what we had, and had in abundance, proper love and care. How I would have given her anything, I hope she was never wanting.

There is nothing to fill this void I realise today and I was at fauly my whole life in trying to fill it. Everything in this whole stupid world is just a stunt to fill the vast, cold and unavoidable pit of death. Everything from this computer, to my job, to the town in which I live, to the politicians, Tv companies, programs, parents, friends, loves, emotions, thoughts, money, possessions, world, stars, moon, universe it is all just paper and Death will tear through it in seconds when it decides to.

This huge demon Death I f*****g hate it. It is my sworn enemy.

...

I have a headache with crying, and crying is pointless anyway. Yesterday by way of good fortune I listened to these talks on the 4 noble truths - atleast the first 2.

I was reinspired by Buddhism.

I can't get this image of her lying dead on her bed out of my head...dead on her bed out of my head... it so cruel, such a poor girl...

I must stop writing...sorry