He was an unkown man to me, but there was something in that face, a humanity and grace that informed and illuminated whatever character he placed upon it.  His face was honest and genuine, with a hint of painful history yet revealing a clear optimism.  John Thaw was something rare among actors.  He was real. 

Acting, at its best, is about becoming real.  One does not achieve authenticity in a role by compressing one's personality down to an invisible speck, and assuming an artificial personality.  A good actor finds and magnifies that speck within him that is the character he seeks to portray, giving it such force and prominence that we lose sight of the actor, and even forget he is acting.  A great actor does exactly the same thing—but he never disappears; the actor remains himself the whole time, yet the character he plays is absolutely and undeniably real.  They are two as one.  John Thaw was real when he played the sometimes cranky, sometimes contemplative Chief Inspector Morse.  This makes his passing all the more difficult; he was not a stranger to us for his being an actor, he was not an unknown person behind a role.  Such is the value of being a great actor; he gave of his substance, of his treasures, he gave of his most deeply held self in his craft—something I find hard to do even for those I love.  John Thaw showed us how to give, simply for the love of giving. 

I wish, right now, that he had not been quite so real, for I would prefer not to feel the passing of such a one as he.  How would I handle it if I were real?  I would acknowledge the sad loss, and go to work...

What do I do? 

Sleep.  Wake to my computer's choice of music, Nils Lofgren, Shine Silently.  Avoid thinking, start to make coffee.  Fold-up futon, enjoying Nils.  Let daydreaming overtake me as I stand in my ripped underwear in the middle of my cluttered dirty apartment—a waking dream.  Resume sequence when I hear gurgle of coffee maker.  Shine Silently ends abruptly, in mid flight, as I pour perfect liquid into coffee carafe, in mid stream, and is replaced by Styx' Show Me the Way.  Seal carafe and retrieve from it a cupful.  Pad over to 'cockpit' (I love that word), replay Shine Silently (complete version) and delete incomplete version from playlist.  Begin to write. 

Hit wall.  Seek diversion.

Start to edit everythingMost playlist to remove entries for incomplete music.  Become entangled in an effort to resort all 1342 entries by song title using a plain text editor.  Employ regular expressions in an unsophisticated attempt to rescue myself, similar to throwing a fire extinguisher at a fire.  Give up.  Get more coffee.

Resume writing.

I've recently learned a little bit about boundaries; a little about what is mine, and a lot about what is not.  Wanting what you do not have is the great American pastime, and for some of us it was a prerequisite for survival in childhood.  I was taught to be very good at wanting what you have, taught to believe with my whole heart that I needed what you had, and that it was perfectly appropriate for me to give you whatever you wanted in exchange for it.  The problem is that we cannot exchange parts of ourselves, romantic rhetoric aside.  The substance of us, defined by our boundaries, is indissoluable and inseperable.  We can pretend to use it as so much coin for emotional commerce, but it never, never leaves my possession, and no matter what I'd like to think, I cannot take possession of any part of you, even in exchange for all of me. 

I was taught that there existed just such a market for the real estate of me.  I've known for a very long time that it was a game, but the threats in my early life—that I'd be abandoned if I didn't play—have laid deep tracks in the now hard-baked muck of history.  Changing the course of this early begun, and decades reinforced path is like trying to send the Mississippi to San Diego Bay. 

I am me.  I can give you any part of my heart and soul, and trust you to take possession of any (or every) part of my life, but it remains me, and if you damage any of it, I will feel the pain, not you.  I have sought to escape responsibility for these parts I give you by taking responsibility for parts of yourself that you give to me.  If I feel your pain I won't have to feel mine, you will.  This was diligently taught to me as the way in which one behaves who is good and kind.  Others are selfish and despicable. 

I have learned that it is insanity.

I don't want to take care of myself, I want someone else to do it.  I don't like me, I want someone else to do it.  I don't like my life, I want someone else to live it.  I don't like my body, I want someone else to take it—and completely give me his.  I don't want to live, I want someone else to live instead of me.  These are all lies.  At different times, I believe each of them.  On particularly dark days, I believe them all.  In the end nothing will be lost, nothing destroyed, nothing will be annhilated.  All sorts of limitless evil can be threatened, and everything can be feared, absolutely everything.  But in the end I will be me, and you will be you, and the sum total of our experience here will be the feelings and emotions we inspired in each other.  That will be all there is. 

That will be everything.

I have been spending the day implementing a greymatter version of my blog.  There's nothing there just yet, except attempts to make all the lines and colors look right.  You might want to visit noahgrey.com to find out more about greymatter, and about who made it.

There's a good chance that once I finally understand how it is all supposed to work, I will continue to use blogger to publish because (despite my antisocial leanings) I like the connection that blogger provides to the whole mass of other blogger-published bloggers.