deadlypretender's photostream

Bunhill Fields, Borough of Islington, London

Primp, pose, consolation, embrace. Leisure for one. Agony, the other.

It's not my habit to wake early, but for some reason I opened my eyes at five o'clock this morning. Out of reflex I checked my email. A trio of letters sent by friends and fellow admirers of Hitchens delivered the news many of us dreaded hearing for a year and a half. The first words, a hammer blow: 'Hitch is dead.'

My arms went stiff at the sight. Over the next short while, my fifth-floor Brooklyn bedroom gradually filled with the sounds of machinery coming to life on the street below. I took aspirin with a rice milk tonic to discourage a mild headache that followed me home from a party I attended the night before and for two hours read through duly deserved remembrances issued from both sides of the Atlantic. A worthy collection can be found at '3 Quarks Daily' on the December 16th page, here: www.3quarksdaily.com/

An absurd question hangs in my mind: 'What do we do now?' An exemplar of moral ferocity, Hitchens achieved an immortality far greater than anything Christians hope for. He was one of the best of our kind. The bulk of what he left us affirms life--rather than exalting death--and will continue to do so as long as the page exists to be read. Doubt is almost always the preferable state of mind, but on this occasion, those claiming otherwise are welcome a correction: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiU5u6zAtyc&list=FLrhSpTD80F8...

The book I'm holding three entries down, in the photo titled 'Duet,' is Hitchens's memoir, 'Hitch-22.'