RIP MJ

Michael Jackson died. This is pretty much the musical equivalent to JFK's death for our generation. I am surprisingly very sad about this. Holden is crushed; MJ was his favorite artist. I remember when he was in my belly and I would play "Wanna be startin' something" and he would swirl and sway to the music. With so much conflict and injustice happening in Iran it is a bit confusing to wrap my mind around how devastated our country is by MJ's death. Wise Stacey said that sometimes grief can comprise more than just the particular event that was the catalyst for the grief itself. Regardless, it is certainly more poignant to me and I will admit that. I remember being a kid and being terrified of Thriller because in the video he turns to his date at the end and has glowing yellow zombie eyes. It made me wonder if people around me were zombies but just looked like regular people. The idea of people being being other than what you think they are was always the most horrifying idea to me. I watched "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" when I was 10 and didn't sleep for a week. I digress, but I think that a major reason as to why people are devastated by Jackson's death is that he represented a particular moment in time that now is extinct. A time in which MTV would actually play videos (which they are today in memoriam which is pretty cool), when pop singers would actually sing instead of lip sync on stage, when people bought records and singles and cassettes instead of just downloading, when a talented little kid who never had a childhood could turn into a troubled, insecure adult who continually tried to please everyone, just like he had when he was a kid pleasing his father, by fitting into society's image of what he was supposed to look and act like. The white beauty, the extravagant spending. And yet I never believed the child molestation allegations. I honestly think that he never got to be a kid and therefore just hung out with little kids because they had what he never did and he wanted to celebrate and live vicariously though it.

I think for a lot of people in my generation MJ is so cemented to our childhood memories that his death is a real testament to the death of our own childhood and the acknowledgement that time has passed and we are all getting older and closer to our own mortality. At the very least it is no more sitting down in front of the tv after a long day swimming and watching the new videos on MTV. I feel like a woman old beyond my time that I am letdown by the current state of the fastfood, hiphop (no offense to HC who loves hiphop), ADD nature of our society. The up side of this is that Chris and I can do our best to create a childhood for Holden that is swimming in summer, exposure to good music, reading books, imaginative play. Basically, a resistance to the current conditions of how quickly children become adults conditioned to prefer computers and DVDs to fairydust dewdrops in the garden and books in invisible ink.

Rant aside, Chris comes home tomorrow yay! We have made it through our first separation post baby. Thanks to Chris's parents for coming to help....we had a great time and can't wait to see you again!

Man I am behind with my pictures. Holden is napping and I am actually able to work on my two kids' books I have been writing. One stars Holden and the other is alien poetry!