Hi, I'm Icarus, I'm falling.

We keep on burying our dead
we keep on planting their bones in the ground
but they wont grow
the sun doesn't help
the rain doesn't help
....Man I have a terrible feeling
That somethings gone awful wrong with the world
Is it something we made
Is it something we ate
Is it something we drank

-Lacrimosa, Regina Specktor





Today, or rather early this morning (4:30 am) an NYU student, a junior, jumped to his death in our library.

Foul, unnecessary, but still in the back of everyone's mind Jokes about the "BOBST diving team" aside: one of us went to a place we all know and ended his own life in a horrific, tragic, shattering way today.

When I say us I don't mean NYU students, I mean us, college students, young adults, all on a similar journey despite our various paths. Going to class, living dorm life, only eating ramen, trying to make it, struggling, and studying late night in the libraries.




Last year I had a Spanish class of 10 kids. I didn't know everyone and no one became a good friend, but the fact is that for two nights a week we all sat in a little room in a basement for an hour and a half trying to better our Spanish, for whatever reason, shrinking behind ugly American accents and hating subjunctive conjugation. As usual, every kid had a chair and/or general area of the room he or she occupied. Every kid had a distinct role: there was the kid who smelled like menthol cigarettes all the time, the eccentric senior, the girl from my home town, the cool guy, the rather goofy guy, the young cute PhD student teacher, etc. Then one day I came into class and no one was moving, and there were two strangers dressed in black at the front, and my teacher looked a way I never saw before. One of my classmates had died. He had been missing from class for about a week or so, no one really noticed, he was just sick or blowing it off, flu season had started, I'm sure I probably made the "is he still alive?" joke on one occasion. He wasn't. He had passed the weekend before. No one had seen him prior too, no one would see him again.

None of us were friends. None of us are. But we all gathered twice a week in a basement for an hour and a half and the fact remained that one of us was gone, had been ferried off into the Netherlands of the afterlife that scare the shit out of any person with a soul underneath the skeleton--That the grim reaper had come and stolen him away and sucked the control right out of our hands and left us spinning in a vacuum and that something strange and deep down inside of us knew we wanted to be sad and we were and we didn't know what to do with it.

It's a tragic thing when a young person dies. It's even more tragic when a young person takes his or her own life because they no longer find the desire to live. Because no one deserves death. And no one deserves to leave. And we don't deserve to be left.

I had a moment earlier today Uptown and in Central Park. I remembered, vividly realized, that everything is connected, all of us, everything. I saw a man-made lake look so perfect I couldn't stand it. I heard the hum of the universe. I saw nature and city become one. I saw human life buzz between them. I heard a baby squeek to my left and saw an older woman being pushed in a wheel chair to my right and as I stood in the middle tears came to my eyes. Everyone and everything is connected and we are so beautiful. I hurt for people who cannot realize this, who never have, who may have once and never will again.

I feel sad for that young man and his family. I feel sad for his friends and for the people who passed him regularly on a daily basis. I feel sad for the student body, because tasteless jokes aside we are all shocked and a little humbled but most of all confused. Because we are all connected. We are all here: on this path, on this ship, in the basement, at that library. And one of us had to go; Icarus--your wax was not suppose to melt this soon yet violently you fell from the sky, your flight was ripped from you, where is my confidence to continue flapping? Why didn't anyone catch you, will someone be there to catch me.

Icarus

We could have helped you, had we known we would have given you some extra wax. Maybe--we could have....
We are all together and one of us left so alone.

I do not know what everyone is going through right now but I know that life is beautiful. I know that death is confusing, and I know that somewhere between a guilted sense of responsibility and necessary apathy/compacted mourning the thought stumbles in the back of each NYU student's mind.
And I know we are not alone and that on every campus some where there is something that shatters common confidence. I know that somewhere between "living fast, dying young" dogmas and constructing dreams every 20 something and late teenager fears fucking up. We're all scared, we're all all flapping. Take a moment, and remember that.





Then keep walking like nothing ever happened,
but honor the fallen feathers.