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.

Remember Me

Building on Dina's Death-related radio listening, last week's This American Life also touched on the topic:

283: Remember Me

Stories about people who are remembered very differently than they'd wished. The ghost of a kindly, distinguished philanthropist supposedly plays pranks on guests at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. A dying mother makes a tape for her developmentally disabled daughter, hoping she'll watch it someday, knowing she might not.

Prologue.

Host Ira Glass talks to Laura Mayer, editor of the New Trier Township High School yearbook, about the renegade student who jumps into as many club photos as he can. And contributing editor Jack Hitt explains how this impulse—to be remembered as someone you're not—can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin. It turns out even the man who invented bifocals padded his resume for history. The key on the kite story, for instance? Probably not true. (9 minutes)

Act One. Thinking Inside the Box.

David Wilcox tells the story of how his mother, who was dying of lung cancer, made a short videotape for his sister, who is severely developmentally disabled. She hoped the tape would become a daily part of her daughter's life, like the other music and movies she liked to play, that she would watch it and remember her mother. But she also knew her daughter might never even see it. (9 minutes)

And we hear two stories from people who recorded their own memories in a booth in Grand Central Station in New York, as part of the StoryCorps project. The first is Don "Moses" Lerman, a champion eater who's thought a lot about what he'll be remembered for. The second is Ronald Ruiz, a bus driver, who's never forgotten one of his passengers. StoryCorps funders include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute. (3 minutes)

Act Two. Where's Walter?

Starlee Kine rents a room at a Ramada hotel in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where a ghost supposedly plays pranks on the guests and staff. The ghost's name is Walter, for Walter Schroeder, the guy who originally built the hotel in the 1920s. It turns out Walter was a successful businessman and a kindly philanthropist who threw great dinner parties. So why would he bother haunting a Ramada? Starlee originally wrote and read a version of this story for The Little Gray Books Lecture Series. (14 minutes)

And...two more stories about remembering, from StoryCorps. The first is a conversation between Ralph Tremonte and and Donald Weiss, who were in mental institutions together as kids, and are reunited after 40 years. The second is Brad Skow talking to his mother, Mary Lou Maher, who gave him up for adoption when she was 17. (4 minutes)

Act Three. Giving Up the Ghosts.

Writer Shalom Auslander reads his short story about how he decided to start forgetting the dead, even though his job required him to remember. Shalom's book of short stories is called Beware of God. (15 minutes)

Song: "Live and Let Die," Guns N' Roses

Listen here.

The Death Show

Saturday afternoon I listened to a beautiful episode of Third Coast International's Re:Sound entitled The Death Show:

April 4, 2009 (#89)- The Death Show
Originally aired on April 12, 2008

Little Black Train
Nora Harrington - Independent Producer, USA

A year and a half after Nora Harrington's father died, at the age of 53, she was still trying to sort through her feelings about mortality. So she did something that most of us avoid: she confronted the topic head-on. She had a series of frank, intimate conversations about the end of life with a few elderly friends, her grandfather, and her mother. What results is a story that's sometimes profound, sometimes poignant, and sometimes surprisingly funny.

The Dead Can't Do You Nothin'
Katie Mingle - Independent Producer, USA

While in New Orleans, Katie Mingle poked around a pauper's graveyard -- even spent a night there -- hoping to encounter a ghost. Instead she befriended some gravediggers and learned a few truths about life and death in the Big Easy.

Live? Die? Kill?
Karen Michel - Independent Producer, USA

When someone dies, when someone is born, it's a little like the world stops turning for the people who are most closely affected. You can't help but think about the big questions: who are we, what is life about, why are we here... These things were on the mind of Karen Michel when she moved to Pleasant Valley, NY right after September 11th. She wanted to find out what was really important to people at this critical time. So she devised three very short, very big questions that got the heart of people's central beliefs and she started asking them.

You can listen to the episode here.

Sketching Death

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samsa1973/sets/1144252/
I worked in a gallery in Providence, RI and I was looking for artists who had work to show...William Schaff invited me to his apartment to take a look at his stuff. At the time (2005?) his front room had a bunch of pleasant sketches of his dog up on the wall. But in the second room, the main living room, there were a lot of scratchboards of piles of dead bodies and politicians vomitting skeletons. When he saw how much we liked his work he took us into another room in which he had many sketches and scratchboards of holocaust victims. It's true that the images were...gruesome...? But there was something about them that made me feel like Wil wanted to look at death as directly as possible - in a way that was far more courageous than the rest of us. What I would most like to post here is a link to his Flickr account, in which you can see the sketches he did of his dying father. The scratchboard work seems appropriate for some of his other images of death - carving images out of the dark.