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2009-01-02

Heath Ledger
B. 4.4.1979 Perth / D. 1.22.2008 Manhattan
Drug Overdose

Another night of not watching The Dark Knight on pay cable; night two, New Year�s Day. I got through, only barely. I had a hard brush with temptation when my mind reminded me that New Year�s Day 2000 or 2001 I�d spent reading Glamorama with great joy, and I wondered maybe it would be a good idea to mark the day that way again by consuming this year�s number one in blasted futuristic body parts and homophobia (artistic group). But I fought through. The question remains: Do my three hours matter less than when I didn�t give them to this film before? I don�t think so. Am I freer now? I see no evidence of it. Here is trivia: The English Patient, Schindler�s List, Saving Private Ryan, Gandhi and Goodfellas. I have not seen any of them. Here I�d almost add an exclamation point: I don�t want to.

Heath Ledger, unusually, your death made me daydream about turning back the clock so I could intervene to stop it. I wished myself onto a sidewalk in Soho where I would warn you�This week take care! This is true: I wished to play your street Cassandra; but heeded, heeded. And in a day or two I found I�d wished myself into a netherworld in which you were not dead. You�d just crossed Spring and Broadway. Inside myself I�d built a comfortable retreat from truth, which wasn�t the unusual part; the reason was
and though it wasn�t my first time, there was no one else I mourned this way last year.
What does it say about me, Heath Ledger, that you were the only one I wanted back? But enough about me�what does it say about you? When I wasn�t even a big fan? We must have been legion, your escorts lamenting, if I was there, tearful in the eyes of heaven even as we smiled and saved you to ourselves, pretending that you hadn�t fallen. What were you�some kind of prince? You might have been. It�s hard to say exactly what we�d seen, except that you were genuine or something in you was
and that was what we wanted back.
You�d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn�t, Heath Ledger) at the size of the grapevine that grows from the Los Angeles coroner�s office. In the distance of my reaches even I received a drop of news; it chilled me. It awakened me to hear how hard it would have been to save you. No longer would I smile-wreathed drift beside your bier, forgetting you were gone. Your broken body shrank, as if your soul had been unusually dense and weighty�as it would be still if soul it was
and that it was the world could plainly see.
Forgive me, Heath Ledger, if I trespass against you to picture your corpse instead of paying for The Dark Knight on cable. You dear man, murder isn�t what I want to see you do�unless you�re playing Hamlet. Are you? That I�d pay to see; I�ll hope you get to talk it over with the playwright
and I will save your crazy for a rainy day.

Consolation Site: out of it

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