Facebook is Death's worst messenger

For the second time this year I've broken down crying in front of a cold laptop screen. Earlier tonight I got a Facebook message informing me that an old friend from school died last Friday of an overdose. I was shocked, and though it registered cognitively it didn't quite hit me emotionally. I phoned Meredith to pass the information along, then went down to the talk I'd been planning to attend. But then I came back, and in searching for a number on Facebook I found his profile. The wall was covered in messages of love and rememberance, to which I added my own. I had a strange urge to call his mobile. And then I was sobbing.

It's times like these that I really feel the ocean--the vast, deep, salty, heavy ocean--between myself and home. Grasping at tendrils of electronic information, trying to translate cold pixeled words into emotions, while another loved one slips quietly into the past tense.

Tomorrow I will go to a tutorial in which we will discuss the implausibility of mind-body dualism; the absurdity of the idea that the mind--or soul--could exist without the body.

I love you Ben. Even if there is none, I'm holding you in the Light.