It’s amazing how things can deconstruct themselves right in front of you.
You think one thing, life presents another.
You multiply that until, eventually, every aspect of your life is different from what you thought.
You find yourself living somewhere unrecognisable.
From Life comes this list of writer and musician suicides.
A friend once told me they believe genius and self-destructiveness go hand-in-hand. I don’t agree, but I think the two are probably close friends.
The list kicks of with who else but Virginia Woolf.
From Life comes this list of well-known booze-hags and addicts. It kicks off nicely with Charles Baudelaire (pictured), addicted to booze and opium, and credited with the marvelous quote:
“Always be drunk … Get drunk militantly. Just get drunk.”
I have requested they add one of my favourite authors, Raymond Carver. Wikipedia puts it like this:
“Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s. Carver stated that alcohol became such a problem in his life that he more or less gave up and took to full-time drinking. After being hospitalized three times (between June 1976 and February or March 1977), Carver began his ‘second life’ and stopped drinking on June 2, 1977.”
Excuse my ignorance, but the other day I wondered – just why is water essential to all forms of life? Its use in cell structures was of obvious significance; but then why not some other liquid for the same job? And why else might it be so important?
After asking Google (aka God), I was answered with this fascinating layman’s summary.
I recall having learnt some of these points during high school bio and chemistry – such as water’s top spot as the only chemical compound to exist naturally on Earth’s surface in all three physical states (solid, liquid, gas)…
Now I wonder, what other terrific facts have been filtered from my brain through the sieve of time?
I’m twenty-six. There are a lot of factoids – thousands, millions! – that I must have learned and unlearned; discovered and lost; collected and catalogued amongst an immense filing system to gather dust.
I want them all found and returned. I want my facts back.
