He has a black bean inside him, at the base and center. Tissue floats out from it, translucent white and waving from his underwater belly. Sometimes when he is sleeping I think I could pull it out of his eye, slide my finger down his nose into the pinky flesh and scoop it out like a pellet, hard and coming out with a curl of my finger, dropping to the floor- his death that he was born with. But it is deeper down and untouchable, waiting and not spinning or jostling and not making sound. Absent sound. Absent movement. Almost confident. But mostly just nestled – a sure thing- more certain than anything. I want to pluck it out but all of his soft insides curl around it, humming.

Stage Directions for a Fearism

Three people stand on stage, each walking on pieces of bright tape that have been made into circles. A fourth, outside person, tears a piece of tape from one person’s circle and everyone stops to watch. The torn person changes direction while the others change the way/ the manner in which they are walking. This repeats for all three circles until each person is essentially walking back and forth on a disconnected circle (a line). Each time the walkers get to an end of the line they change direction and they change their manner of walking (as though if they change their manner, their circles will be made whole again) until finally, one by one, they step off their lines and are completely still.

Clif knows a third person who is afraid:

Fear of bad newspaper headlines, Mayan numbers, climate change, loss of polar magnetism, and/or large objects hurtling from space at mindbending speeds:


 
is the fear of global catastrophe

is the fear of that which is beyond control

is the fear of the loss of control

is the fear of being defenseless

is the fear of not being able to prevent the end of this existence

is the fear of there not being another existence

is the fear of non-being

is the fear of death
 
 
It’s 1993 on the T.V. and he has wrapped himself up in 1994,
v-necked and allowing for deep breathing and openness and interconnectedness, but he recalls:
 
driving in 2001, listening to 96x; hearing the friend of a classmate on the radio telling him an asteroid has a date with the planet some night in 2017 and in
 
2009 he sits and starts to shake and thinks of
armageddon commercials,
reports of rising waters,
the pot-smoking engineer playing Dr. Mario and warning him that the poles are losing their ability to point a compass north and
he just shivers and
runs in circles, but not away from the global catastrophe that awaits.
 
Running in circles, not cutting through the floor, not stirring anything but the air in the sitting room, exerting control over nothing he fears, in the air or space, because the air and space are quite beyond his control, he quite involuntarily becomes nauseous and falls, quite lacking the self-control to prevent himself from vomiting on the hardwood, violently, eyes tearing,
 
on all fours, insensible, he thrashes about, searching for something upon which to steady himself, he finds the T.V. stand to be wheeled when he tries to lift himself up, it slides, the T.V.  falls,
he is defenseless,
unable to prevent flashing/singing 1993 from crashing down upon him in high definition.
 
There is a fire now.
 
1993 is broken and so is his shoulder.  He has also received quite a blow to the spine.  He cannot move, other than to quake and tremble with a • b + c - d=y (let a represent the thing you won’t tell anyone, b=smashing force, c=the dark, d=dignity, y=you), as he watches the flames lick up the walls, but he does not scream out because all of his energy has run up into his mind to consider this:
 
he did not exist before birth and he was unable to prevent being born, thus he will be unable to prevent what is shaping up to look a lot like impending death, thus he is as unable to prevent the end of his existence as he was to prevent its start,
 
and unless you have been in a slightly prolonged death experience you cannot challenge the fact that he could, or would, have been thinking such things Mr. or Ms. Reality-Cop, which, you of all people should know, is impossible because you are dead and probably unable to read internet bloggings,
 
burning alive is probably no good, there is a shard of glass he could bleed himself out with, but he is clinging to every second,
not remembering the time before he was born, he worries
there will be no existence to follow, and
so he must savor the exquisite pain of what remains.
 
1994 is turning to ash around his body, v-neck not having much to do with breathing anymore and there is nothing to sweater because his skin will no longer let moisture pass through its blackening pores.
 
His thoughts are all that is left, but they seem to rattle around, trying to shake the idea that he will cease to be. 
 
They solidify on an image of what is not even the color white nor the absence of light nor bright nor black.
 
The 90’s and all other decades become irrelevant as the neighbors dog runs out of the buildings front door.  He is cold because they cut off all of his hair and his head looks much larger than his body.

Fearism Story: Fear of others

The Fear of others is the fear of judgment is the fear of rejection is the fear of loss is the fear of being alone is the fear of having nothing is the fear of being nothing is the fear of death

Janet is so scared all the time. People people everywhere, she hates people. She doesn't want anything to do with them. Why do they talk to her, why do the look at her, why do they, why do they? No peace for Janet, always people, but never peace. A person will talk to her and look at her, and she knows, is absolutely certain. She is clearly not good enough for people. People are much better than Janet, they are much more firm and smell so nice, look so fine, taste so ripe and sound so clear. People hate what Janet lacks. They say, "she isn't like me at all."

Janet has a secret. She tried once. To be with others, but people rejected her. People wanted nothing to do with Janet. People gave Janet loss. She greeted loss, and loss stuck with Janet. Never left Janet's side. Loss became a close friend to Janet, holding onto her ribs. Janet carried loss around and it would climb up her ribs and into her ear and speak the only word it could say. Alone. Alone Alone Alone Alone. Janet was alone. There was just Janet. Just Janet. Alone. There was nothing else in the world. Janet had nothing but Janet.

As Janet drifted in her void, she looked around the nothing and a thought came to life in her head. "If everything is nothing, how could I possibly be something?" Panicked, she scrambled to define herself, her role in the void. Something that had purpose, meaning, texture, but it was useless, there was nothing. All Janet could do was become nothing. All Janet could do was turn to death.

Hi Death, I'm Janet

Hi Janet I'm Death

Pause

Janet?

Yes Death

Would you like to become me? Would you like to be Death?

Gee Death, I would be honored.

Luke's fearism as silent film in one act

Fear of the unknown/unidentified
is the fear of lack of knowledge
is the fear of powerlessness
is the fear of inefficacy
is the fear of being forgotten
is the fear of temporality
is the fear of death


interior, victorian parlor.

everything is lace and candles. in the center of the room is a circular table, draped in white. on the table sits a box. a black box. it absorbs the light around it. one might even say it exudes darkness. in a high-backed chair in the corner of the room sits a man. there is one door in the room. it is closed.

the man rises from the chair with precision. he strides towards the table with purpose. he stops short. stares at the box. he is making a decision. he continues towards the table, moving more slowly. he cannot make himself move closer. he does not know why.

the man moves around the room. he collects burning candles from various surfaces and places them around the edge of the table. the box remains unchanged. it does not move. it does not brighten. it remains.

the man begins to panic. his eyes, shifting, focus on the door. he runs to it. his hand pauses on the knob. he could open it. but they will not let him out. they will not let him out until he opens the box. the man returns to his chair.

he stares at the box. the candles are going out. no one is coming. he cannot see. slowly, the man dies.

John's Fearism as Third Person Narrative

The Fear of Stepping on the Cracks in the sidewalk Is the Fear of breaking a pattern Is the Fear of disorder Is the Fear of losing control Is the Fear of the non-existence of meaning in a random universe Is the Fear of having no purpose Is the fear of being nothing in a world of nothing and a non-thing is as if dead.


After many years of fearing the cracks he chose to step on the third one on the way to the corner store.

A fraction of a moment later he regretted his decision and continued to walk in between the cracks. But his gate, his way of walking altered slightly, it was unfamiliar to him. He was going to turn around and begin again to make it better, but that didn’t seem to make sense.

He looked back towards his destination. Looking into the distance he couldn’t distinguish the difference between the shape of the minimart and the shape of the planned parenthood building. The letters on the signs no longer seemed to hold together as words, they were just lines and squiggles. He could no longer keep his eyes focused so they wandered uncontrollably.

Had he turned around accidentally or was he facing his home? How many times had he turned around? Now there seemed to be no difference between where he was and where he was going. He began to run in random directions, sometimes jumping sometimes veering sometimes turning completely around again.

He tried to say to himself that this was progress, whether forward or back, but he assumed he was just tricking himself. Was he always tricking himself? There is no home, there is no direction that leads anywhere, no history.

So he stopped. Was he standing or sitting, or was he even there anymore. Was that light coming towards him, away, was it always there? He felt the steal against his leg and then he felt nothing.

Naming the Dead

They call them "Tent Girl", "Johnny Dupage", and "Homestead". These are among the substitute names given to the unidentified dead, bodies that have yet to be connected to a history, family, or life. There are thousands of them which are known. There are thousands more that have not been reported, or put in the appropriate databases and lists. Determining the true identities of these Does is difficult and time-consuming - most police and medical examiners don't have the time or resources to devote. Enter the Doe Network.

The Doe Network is a product of the Internet age - a collection of individual citizens brought together across great distances for a common cause. They share resources, communicate about cases, and work with law enforcement in the hope that they can find names for the unidentified dead. The first article I read about the Network is archived here. I still cry when I read it. It follows one of the original members, Todd Matthews, in his search for the identity of "Tent Girl", so named for the piece of canvas she was wrapped in when discovered. There is a similar article with more information here.

The second article contains this quote from Matthews:

"The one real fear in life is not death -- the greatest monster of all is the unknown. Particularly when the location of a loved one is the unknown. I see folks with missing loved ones literally writhing in pain."

This gives a little insight into the reasons why so many Network volunteers spend their free time hunched over their computers, scouring medical records and message boards for the smallest clue that might lead to an identification.

The fearism I posted started with "fear of the unknown/unidentified". The Doe Network and what I learned about missing persons was my inspiration for that. My fears about the unknown are largely related to becoming unknown myself - going through life without making a difference, or affecting other people in a significant way. To die without a name is one of the worst things I can imagine. I suspect many of the volunteers feel the same way - or they empathize with those left behind, and feel an obligation to bring closure to long-forgotten cases.

Their obsession with the dead is a help to families, medical personnel, and law enforcement in a very real way. Hopefully our obsession will be a help in its own strange way.

Photo courtesy of Kim Fowles.