Too bad, Michael J.  I cry for others.

Remembering the people once they are dead, is as sinful as excusing yourself before pulling the trigger.  We run too fast to make sense of the living.  We write obituaries of the famous in order to be prepared.  But our own parents, lovers, rabbits?  They die without us noticing and they lie dead and buried before we really understand they are gone.

There are several very common methods of grief.  We can write a symphony, poem or cry until we simply have no more tears.  We can congregate in church, funeral home or football stadium to remember those who without our remembrance are no longer in existence.  We bow our head, pull out our hair or dance.  Depending on the greatness of the person, we do this privately, with our family or planet wide.  Michael J. is someone whose greatness is not beyond doubt, whose music wasn’t selling as it used too, of whom my generation doesn’t really know whether he was white or black, originally.  My rabbit however, although his life was short, never disappointed me, never made me cry, and never tired me with his face being the focus of all media.  My rabbit lived his life to the fullest and although he could finish all the carrots I gave him, he knew his own limits.  My rabbit did not distract me when a critical situation took place, when a revolution was being made or when justice might have been finally found in the hearts of the courageous.  My rabbit died peacefully and nobody questioned his integrity. 

Unfortunately for the dead, there are great things at stake.  Every moment is crucial.  When you believe history has a direction, why weep over someone you never knew?  And when you don’t believe the world has no point, why live at all?  Why not live without caring, live extremely daring?  Why not take all the pills, fornication and mind blowing other things that exist?  Why not drill a little hole in your head so that the overflow of oxygen in your brain let’s you forget all your lows? 

Those without direction, worship directionlessness.  And those with direction, worship it too, unconsciously.  We all find ourselves on the one side of the coin that is never going to be the other side, that funnier side that always looks up.  While we are face down in the mud, we worship those from our midst that see heaven in that same mud.  And I congratulate them.  For they saw and have overcome. 

I will stay in the mud, and not pretend it is great.  I will focus my hope of on something beyond it.  I will not cry over Michael Jackson.  I will not even weep when Barack Obama, Quentin Tarantino or another Rabin, or any of those global illusions die.  I will not stand still.  I will not be saddened.

Yet I will cry, deep inside, when those on fake trials, those who are discriminated, those who are martyrs for their harmless beliefs, are slaughtered.  I will scream and pull out my hair.  The sounds I will make will scare my neighbours.  The physicians of this world will wonder how my reddened eyes can still clearly see the world and distinguish good from bad.  I will cry and cry and cry until I am so much awake, that the injustice will hit me again.  And then, and only then, I feel truly alive.

There are no statistics that can tell the good from the bad.  That can demonstrate the heroism, the true magnificence of those who walk to their butcher with eyes filled with goodness.  That can demonstrate the ultimate human fulfillment of those standing in front of the animal in man-suit.  It takes a human being to tell that. 

I will never stop counting those six million. I will never forget that one girl who was murdered while embracing humanity.  I will never deny the gruesomeness animals are capable of.  And I will never stop believing in the beauty mankind is able to bring forth.

I will cry for you.