The Stars Have the Farthest To Fall
Disclaimer: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps, although this post has nothing to do with the Peace Corps.

I was in high school when Princess Diana died. My best friend Jessica slept over Saturday night and on Sunday morning we went to church. I remember walking through the church parking lot on this spring morning and Jessica said "the world usually looks different after someone dies, but it today it still looks the same." The news was so new I didn't know what she was talking about.

The world doesn't look different today, either.

Last night at 12:45 I was in bed and I got a text message that Heath Ledger was found dead. I couldn't believe it. He was 28. A year older than me. I knew he had a two year old baby, but I didn't know he and his wife had split up. I feel sad, that it's such a loss of a young life and a talented person. He was the youngest ever actor to be nominated for Best Actor (male) in the Academy Awards.*

Of course, it's sad when it happens to anyone, not just someone famous. Sadly, it's kind of the same as Kassie Dallmann who I always liked and respected; a terrible tragedy. Kassie's death is no less tragic than a celebrity's but it's strange how it feels more real with someone I've never met, but have on DVD. I was thinking how am I going to watch Brokeback Mountain or the Brother's Grimm again. It won't be the same now. And I was so looking forward to Dark Knight Returns - looking forward to it on a perverse fantatic kind of level. I still want to see it and think it will be good, but it will be like watching James Dean where you know that more brilliant work could have come from this person, and now it won't.

I was laying in bed last night thinking about how when I was a kid I would play war and I always had invisible friends who were wounded, on the brink of death or dying. For a while I think I romanticised death, that whole Life fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse kind of thing - which is fine until everyone forgets you.

I won't forget you Heath Ledger.

*that's because an eight or nine year old girl won Best Actress once.