Thanatopsis: Look It Up. Trust Me.

Santa Cruz is life. Seriously, it is a garden of light and water and sun, a creche for relaxation. Despite an intensity at work that's rather brutal, I'm feeling liberated and free of late. In part, this is because I've completed a trifecta of whale sightings: this year I have seen a blue whale, hundreds of grey whales, and now in Santa Cruz, multiple humpback whales. These are the three types of whales that I remember people talking about on the California coast when I was growing up, so they have a special significance for me. There is something that feels surreal about seeing whales, dolphins and otters just offshore. It feels like I'm stepping outside the Matrix, seeing something real without comprehending the enormity of it at first.

Santa Cruz is also creativity. Today is November 1st, the start of National Novel Writing Month. I had forgotten it until a friend on Facebook reminded me today. That could be a good thing, as now I can start with absolutely no preconceived plan or idea, just write and write and write. I feel inspired by the atmosphere here; so do many people, I would say, like the man who parked his car along West Cliff Drive, overlooking the ocean, so he could sit in the driver's seat and play the flute, or the men with bongo drums--you see a lot of men with bongo drums here; there must have been a convention and everyone forgot to leave at the end.

(Speaking of life, creativity, and digital art, here's a plug for my friend Tsu Fu's videography site, which looks to have the potential to grow and foster other artistic endeavors. Full disclosure: quid pro quo means I tout his site, he touts my blog. Sounds fair to me.)

So with all this life and creativity bubbling around like a fountain, naturally I've decided to write about our culture's preoccupation with death.

I didn't necessarily intend to write about death when I first started mulling this blog. I wanted to write about the whale hat trick, among other things, or the fun of Halloween--I gave out candy for the first time ever, and I made a point of making all the teens and pre-teens and college kids say 'trick or treat' before they got candy, which I think makes me awesome rather than cranky. I could have written about going trick or treating with Marina, her sister and brother-in-law and nephews, and the fun of hearing a three year old start to be able to say my name with enthusiasm.

But the omens were all there. The fates want me to talk about death. A couple of days ago, my dictionary.com app sent me a word of the day of thanatopsis. That is just a cool word, and I've been wanting to find a way to work it in to conversation or writing somehow, someway. Then today in the bookshop in Santa Cruz, I saw a graphic novel collection of Captain America Reborn. Not only did they kill him off last year, but apparently they have resurrected him; I didn't read the whole thing, so I could be wrong. If that wasn't enough of a sign, when I walked home, I saw a broken Captain America shield in the gutter:





Halloween costume remnant or a sign from the muses? I'm going with the sign from the muses, because signs from muses accompany a tumbler of bourbon better than do costume remnants.

Also, I bought the new Terry Pratchett novel today. The title? Snuff, of course.

So is the fascination with dying heroes a new thing? We killed Superman and resurrected him, of course. I also saw--but didn't glance at--another graphic novel about the death of Peter Parker.

What does it mean that we write and embrace stories where superheroic icons die? The rebirth factor is clearly because we love to think our heroes are strong enough to come back from the dead, because that is pretty bad-ass--no disrespect intended, but don't we kind of see Jesus as the first superhero in this context? Buffy the Vampire Slayer came back from the dead twice, and she pretty much set the bar for awesome heroes for the new generation, with a little bit of a dark edge.

But why do we need the heroes to die in the first place? To have a sense of high stakes? Don't we have that sense already with our own fragility? Do we kind of like to see heroes with feet of clay, or fallen heroes? That would explain the success of tabloids.

I'm not even going to go into the fact that the French call an orgasm le petit mort. What's that about?

I guess that the only conclusion I can come to without going to the effort of actually doing research or thinking about this blog for more than fifteen minutes is that pop culture is a filter for the things that we are all preoccupied with, and we are all preoccupied with death. Which seems weird to me, given that there are whales and dolphins and otters out there to see. But then again, now that I've seen all three types of whales, I do kind of want to see a great white shark in the wild, which may seem morbid, especially in the light of the recent shark attack near Monterey, and which no doubt is unfair to the great white shark, which is misunderstood, blah blah blah, and I say blah blah blah in the nicest, not-undercutting-at-all sense.

The fundamental point I'm trying to make is: it would be awesome to see a shark in the wild.