Revisiting the Abandoned

As some of you will know (maybe most of you?), back in April, I did Abandoned Places as my A-to-Z theme. Alex wanted to know more about what went into that whole thing: where the idea came from, how I found the places, what kind of research was involved; so he asked me a bunch of questions about it. Because I'm (mostly) a nice guy (depending upon what day of the week it is (or whether you're asking my kids)), I answered them. You can see the whole thing over at the Blogging from A to Z Challenge blog, so you should probably hop over there and read that.

* * *

A while back I announced that I have a new thing coming out... um... I want to say soon, but my kids and back-to-school have completely derailed my process these past few weeks and, although I have finished writing it, it is mostly still only written in pen. None of which is the important part. As I said back when I announced this, I'm looking for a backup short story to go along with it. While I've had a few people express interest, I've had no one give me a firm commitment, as in "Hey! I have something written, and I would love for it to appear with your story!" So... If you have something written and you'd like for it to appear at the back of my vague and undescribed story, let me know. [If you're interested, I will tell you what the project is, but, otherwise, it's a secret until it's ready to go.

* * *

Speaking of new things, the new issue, the August issue, of Indie Writers Monthly is out!

There's tons of good stuff in each issue. Unless you're actually trying to weigh it, in which case, you'll find it's a bit hard to grasp being virtual and all that. My article in this issue is all about editing and softball. You should definitely check it out!

* * *

Just a reminder: My two sons have started up their own blog. It's called Aim for the Cat! Yes, there is a reference involved; no, I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm assuming one of them will get around to explaining it at some point, but, hey, they are teenagers, so who can tell? Also, who can tell what they're going to talk about? So far the posts have been movie reviews, reflections on the state of the universe (or something like that), and Spore. If you don't know what Spore is, I suppose you'll just have to go over and find out. Oh, and while you're there, leave them an encouraging word or three.

* * *

And the last thing...

Well, I don't even know where to begin with the last thing. Most of you, being the people of the Internet that you are, will have heard or seen that Robin Williams is dead. I'm not one to get gushy over celebrities, but a few of them have been part of things (usually movies) that have been significant in my life. If you click my "Of Significance..." tab at the top of the page, you'll see that Dead Poets Society 

is (and has been) listed as one of my pieces of significance. That movie had a profound impact on me, and I have a sense of loss with passing of Williams. It's also very saddening that he had no one around him that could reach out and help.

I'm going to leave it at that.

Abandoned Places: Qasr el Baron

Modeled after the Angkor Wat, the Qasr el Baron, or Baron Empain Palace, took four years to build. It was finished in 1911 in the Heliopolis district of Cairo and has a troubled, if not sinister, history. In fact, the palace was built by the guy who founded Heliopolis, Belgian millionaire Edouard Louis Joseph, Baron Empain. The house was surrounded by gardens and terraces within which hid erotic statues. The main tower is said to have been built on a revolving base to provide a 360 degree view and constant sunlight into the Baron's room. There's also a rumored secret tunnel to the nearby basilica, somewhat at odds with the whispers of Satan worship and orgies that went on during the years Baron Empain  was in residence.

The Baron's wife, scorned by the Baron's affairs, is said to have thrown herself down the stairwell of the revolving tower.

His daughter, Miriam, suffered from psychological issues and would sequester herself in the basement rooms when she was in a bad mood. It was there she was found dead. Murder or suicide? No one knows.

The Baron returned to Belgium at the beginning of World War I and never returned to the house. It's said that there was a mirrored chamber in the basement rooms, possibly the same room Miriam was found in, and, upon the Baron's death in 1929, the mirrors ran with blood and were permanently stained red.

The Baron's son moved in for a while after the Baron's death, but it was a fairly short tenure. It had been abandoned, looted (including any mirrors), and vandalized by the 50s. In 2005, the Egyptian government bought the property and began plans to restore it. It was briefly opened to the public but, after only two months, was closed again and never re-opened. No explanation has ever been given.

All but the first and last pictures are by Hossam el-Hamalawy and used under the linked license.

As an added bonus, here are some pictures of some abandoned quarries:

My Relationship with Death (part 4)

And so we arrive at it, the reason for all of these thoughts about death.

Several weeks ago as I was sitting down to write, well, I was just getting started for the morning, I "got a call" (it wasn't really a call, but that's a close enough equivalent). A friend of mine from high school, one of my best friends from high school, was dead. He had taken his own life (that's how I was told to say it). The call came from the actual scene of the event.

That's rough.

I was asked to deliver the news to our group of friends from back then because I still have minimal contact with most of them and because it's not the kind of thing that gets reported in a way where people are likely to find out.

That was more rough.

Some background might be good at this point.

(I'm changing his name in this post.)

Bob is someone I knew from church. I'm gonna guess I knew him from about 2nd grade on up. I know I knew him by 4th grade, though, because we were in Mrs. Stroud's Sunday school class together. And, then, a bunch of other stuff happened that has nothing to do with this, so we'll jump ahead to the end of my freshmen year of high school when I got involved in the youth group at my church.

There was going to be this thing, this big event, in Washington D.C. the summer between our freshmen and sophomore years, the summer of '85, called Youth Congress '85 (appropriate, no?), and we wanted to go. It was expensive, though, and neither of us had rich families. It was so expensive that everyone else in the youth group immediately discounted going at all. But Bob and I wanted to go, so we set about doing that. Our youth pastor found us another group to travel with, and Bob and I worked our butts off that summer to raise the money for the trip. Actually, we had about three weeks to do it. $2000 a piece. And find a chaperon that could go with us, because we wouldn't be allowed to go without one.

That was a major bonding experience. We did all sorts of things, and our church helped us to find jobs to do. Some of them were pretty good, but they also included grooming this old lady's yard for $5.00. The woman was ancient, and she said she'd pay well to have someone come mow her yard. No big, right? But we got there, and she kept having us do more and more stuff. Trim the hedges. Trim the sidewalks. I don't even remember what all we did, but it took us an entire morning to do it. Three hours. At the end of it, she gave us $5.00. Not $5.00 each, she gave us $5.00 and said that that was the most she'd ever paid for yard work and wasn't about to start paying more now. So, yeah, we did a lot of stuff like that to earn the money we needed, but we managed to pull it off (and find a chaperon) and went to the conference. It was great!

That's kind of what our high school church experience was like.

I worked in the gym at church doing recreation stuff. It was a job I ended up earning in part due to that trip. I worked in the after school programs and I worked in the summer programs and I worked all the time. I was at church a lot. Bob didn't live that far away and, especially during the summers, he'd come up and hang out in the rec office with me. A lot of the teenagers came up, but Bob was there the most. He'd play DJ while I worked; we sort of collaborated together on music a lot and were always on the leading edge of what was new in Christian music to the point of being told some of the Christian music we brought in wasn't Christian enough. Like, we could get away with White Heart (barely), but Petra was a battle for a while. A lot of the music we discovered had its roots in that conference we went to.

Worth mentioning: One day while he was getting the music stuff set up  in the office, he went to plug in the tape deck and got blasted across the office into the opposite wall. I was standing about three feet away from him; there was a blast of blue light and a tiny sound of thunder, and he just slammed into the opposite wall. Yeah, that's the kind of events we had together.
Yes, I do have stories about D.C.

We grew up. I went off to college, and he got a job. About the time I moved back to Shreveport, he joined the Air Force. By the time he was back, I'd moved to California. Eventually, we reconnected on Facebook. Of all of my friends from my teen years and, even, my college years, he was the one I stayed most in touch with. He bought a signed copy of The House on the Corner for his daughter. He said he loved it and that he especially loved it because it had so much of Shreveport in it, especially Barksdale AFB, where he worked.

Back when I was overly addicted to Facebook games, we talked a lot. He'd IM me to chat when he saw me online. We did some of the games together and stuff. Eventually, though, the FB games were being too much of a distraction to me, and I started cutting them out. The cutting kept going until I'd cut all of them out. The last time we talked, which was over a year ago, he IM'd me to see if I wanted to play some new game, a game which looked like something I would like but which I knew I didn't have time for, so I kind of hedged and told him I'd take a look at it but I didn't think I'd have any time to play. In fact, I knew I wouldn't have time to play, because I was taking a stance against anything that distracted me from writing, but I didn't have it in me to just say "no, I'm not gonna play that."

I hate, now, that that was the last conversation we had. I was busy. And I was. So much so that I hardly ever even logged onto FB. And, so, I missed that he was having some kind of health issues. Not that he posted a lot about it, but I didn't even know that there was an issue. I wasn't around for him to talk to. It had been over a year since we'd talked at all when I got the message that he was dead.

And here's the thing: I don't understand. I mean, you can kind of understand when a teenager commits suicide, because, in a certain sense, they don't know any better. They don't yet know that things will get better, that things won't always be bad, so, when a teenager takes his/her own life, it's not necessarily something that is the teenager's fault. It's why we have a juvenile system. They're not old enough, yet, to "get" it. But an adult... And, AND! an adult with kids, three of them, like me. I just don't understand.

How do you get to that place? Not just a place where things seem so bad that you don't think you can go on, but a place that's so bad that you're willing to be entirely selfish and not think about what it is you're going to do will do to your children. I do not understand.

But I'd really like to understand. I want to know what he was going through. I do know bits and pieces, but I've only found those things out after the fact. I didn't know them when I might have been able to do something, to step in. I want to know what it was in his life that he thought was so bad that he would leave his kids, kids he loved, and I know he did, because he bragged about them all the time. To me, he especially talked about how much his oldest daughter liked to read.

This is the kind of thing that both baffles and scares me. I knew him. I would never have thought he would have done anything like this. Never. So I want to know what it is that could have brought him to a place where he would take his own life. What could have been that bad? Because I can't imagine anything that would take me to that place other than actually losing my children. But he hadn't lost his, and, now, they have to figure out how to go on living knowing that their father left them behind.

And there's nothing I can say to them. I don't even know them, but, if I did, there would be nothing I could say to explain what happened or make it better.

All I have is this:
I know that life can get bad. It can be dark. It can be horrible. It can seem as if all the light in your world is gone, and, maybe, it is all gone, BUT! But it won't stay gone. Life is change. Things will get better again. Ride it out. Hold steady in the storm. Don't give in to despair and give up before you know the outcome. Get help. GET HELP! Don't keep the darkness locked inside.

I have other friends doing their own battles with darkness. Some of them only talked about what they were going through because of Bob. All I know is that I don't want to hear about more friends doing what Bob did. I don't want more friends ending their lives without me ever getting to see them again. Not that I know if I will ever see any of my old friends again, but I know I will never see Bob again, and that fills me with an abiding sadness.

So, if there are any of you out there that need someone to talk to, need someone to reach out a hand, need someone to help you shine light into the darkness, find someone. If you don't think there is anyone else, you can email me. I'll do my best to connect you with someone that can help if I can't. Just don't let it pull you down until you can't find your way back out. Just don't.

My Relationship with Death (part 1)

Children have such a loose concept of death. They know that it's a thing and learn that it's a thing that means the person in question will not be there anymore, but they don't know what it means. It's sort of the equivalent of a broken toy in many respects leaving the child waiting for a replacement. But there is no replacement from death.

I remember  my first funeral. I think I was three. Maybe two. I remember all the people at my grandparents' house, like snapshots of strangers in the sun on the porch stairs, but, mostly, I remember the body of my great-grandfather, who was hardly a person to me, but whom my mother loved, and how he looked waxy laying in the casket. Like a wax figure. 40 years later, that is still the image in my mind. A wax man in a coffin. Like it wasn't real, because, at three, it's just not.

Childhood is a progression of meaningless deaths, in fact; distant relations that have no meaning to us. We can't feel the death, because, frankly, that person means much less to us than a favorite toy or even the goldfish that sits in our room and that we're responsible for feeding (I never owned a goldfish). Sure, there are exceptions for some people, but, see, they're exceptions. Most of us go through childhood and funerals watching other people cry and wondering why. We just don't get it.

And that continues... until it doesn't.

Because, even after we've figured out what death is, for most of us, it's still meaningless. We don't mean it to be; after all, we get that someone has died, but it just doesn't touch us. It's someone else's tears, someone else's pain, and we might cry, but it's for that other person's pain, not our own.

Until it isn't.

This is why, though, teenagers get so wrapped up in death. Those that do. It's never been close enough to understand, not really, so the idea of suicide doesn't really seem real. Because death has never really seemed real. It's easy, then, to play the suicide card, because other kids get it enough to say "no, don't do that," but not enough to really take action. Because, really, who would do that, right?

It was a suicide that brought my first real discomfort with death. I think I was 17 and I didn't know the girl. But, see, she knew me. She knew me well enough to talk about me and the fact that she had a crush on me. I was nice to her, you see, but I didn't know her. She used to visit my youth group, and I made a big impression on her, because, the first time she ever came, the time she came when she didn't know anyone except the one person she came with, I went up to her and introduced myself and welcomed her into the group and brought her over to everyone else and made her feel like she belonged. But I didn't know her. That's just how I was. She made friends, and people knew her, but I never really did.

So when someone asked me why I hadn't gone to her funeral, I didn't know what she was talking about. First, the name of the girl didn't mean anything to me. I had no idea whom she was talking about as the girl hadn't been to youth group in months. Worse, though, I couldn't bring any picture of the dead girl to mind, and no one's attempts to remind me of whom she was did any good. I hadn't been to the funeral simply because I hadn't known she'd died. Because I didn't know who she was.

Of course, then everyone felt obligated to let me know what I'd meant to her. That she'd had a crush on me since I first introduced myself to her. That, really, she'd come to our youth group (because she actually went to a different church) as often as she did because of me. That she spoke of me as "the nicest person ever." That she talked about me. A lot. Asking how I was and all of that.

And I didn't even know her name or her face, and the guilt just poured on, because, maybe, if I'd paid better attention, I could have done something. Of course, in my head, I know it wasn't my fault and that I had nothing to do with it. In fact, one of the things I later learned is that she had been talking about suicide since well before she met me and that meeting me actually delayed it. But that doesn't change how it feels. The feel of it is "how could I have been so important to her life and not know who she was." I wonder if celebrities ever have those thoughts.

That was when I first really became aware of death in a real sense. In a meaningful sense. In the sense that death was a thing that could affect me in a meaningful way. And that moment, that confrontation of this girl's death, the girl I didn't know, has stayed with me for 25 years. It still makes me uncomfortable, because I still wonder how I could not have known any of this beforehand. Not that I had a reason to. No one told me. I suppose they all just thought I must already know.

Not long after, one of my closest friends would lose her father and another friend (in the sense that I had classes with him and had known him for years) would go off the road from driving while intoxicated and kill two children. Showing great mercy and forgiveness, the parents of the children did not press charges, but I can only imagine what it must have been like for him. In all honesty, he became a much more likable person afterwards.

Mostly, though, Death was just a distant thing all through high school. I had brushes with it, but I didn't come face to face with it. Not yet...

Note:
On a morbidly related note, there's a blogfest on Friday:

Pop in over here, read all about it, and get signed up! Seriously, go do it. Now.