2006-03-09
"Heavier than Heaven"
600 pages into the book, I'd realized that when Kurt Cobain committed suicide on that day in April, his soul, somewhere lost between Heaven and Hell, managed to fly to Canada and escape and blend with the essence that constitute's Alastair L.
Reading Kurt's biography has been heartbreaking. Not because I, along with other fans who've read, have had to be reminded of the suicide and the life he lead up to his inevitable death. He reminds me of the boy with whom I fell in love.
And watching Tracy's desperation, I saw the ones I used to have and my old fears resurfaced. But that story is markedly different from this one. It is...different, yet the same.
For a while I've been able to push things back, to hide in other things and even pretend this never happened.
Today I can walk out of my British Literature class and pretend that this has been my life all along: research papers and a frenzy of ideas, all marking the insatiable thirst for intellectual adventure--something new.
This craving most likely comes from that desire to test my limits and to explore something that is beyond what I once saw as an opportunity for happiness.
Because believe it or not, and I suppose I say this mostly to myself, that boy with the glacier-blue eyes and blond hair who once met me at the airport with a red t-shirt and black berret...
That boy who used to ramble about socialism so passionately...
The one who'd improvise bad poetry, witty jokes, and who would listen to Metric...
He's gone.
He's gone and I can't sit here writing this and pretend that I, too, have not changed because I have and I hate having to recall the fact that we're two big, stupid, whiny adults who can't get over the fact that our souls of childhood ran away with one another...and left us behind, dumbfounded, searching--who knows.
Sometimes I wake myself up in the mid-afternoon nap--I tremble because I had dreamt of kisses and tears that were too real, and I'm sucked into the arguments and the tender kisses.
Now, I've a different zipcode and life. This is the school where I learned to like Indie music, and where my affair with Kurt Cobain began.
I could sit here and make a case for how everything's changed, and how I care more about learning something on Primo Levi than I do on remembering the past. But that's too false--everything I do seems to be driven by the old Libet.
I still love him, with all my heart. But I know better now, I repeat to myself...I know he's not convenient or worthy.
And every time I listen to The Appleseed Cast's "Fight Song" or "Sinking" I think of those things.
I cling on to my beautiful Kurt because he reminds me of Alastair, and I guess that for now, that's what I want: my perfect memory and the beauty of moments that have passed.