On Sep 17, 11:41 am, Ryan Reich <ryan.re...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/?p=90
>
> The series, in bitter irony, will have no end. Do I mourn for it or for
> him?
I had a very close friend during my first two years at University. We
lived in something akin to what Americans call a dorm, where tensions
could sometimes run high, but he was the guy who nobody ever said a
bad word about. He was just a happy, relaxed kinda guy, and you were
always glad to be having a beer with him.
And then, in the last month or so of our second year, he changed quite
abruptly. He became the recluse who stays in his room and only comes
out to yell at people for having their music up too loud. In a
building where the night was still young at 2am, he became the guy who
would tell us to stop talking so loud and piss off to bed at
midnight. And then, after exams finished, where most people stay
around just a bit longer to celebrate, he vanished. His room was
empty, and he was gone. Our only contact with him was through his
girlfriend, who still lived with us.
Third year started, and he wasn't around anymore. But we were a big
group, so the lack of one person couldn't really change the dynamic.
And besides, he'd made such an arsehole of himself before he left that
we didn't really miss him.
And then he died in a car accident.
And it took me ages to feel anything. He was already gone from my
life, and my last few weeks with him had left such a sour taste in my
mouth that I'd already just...let go. But at the same time, I'd had
so many great times with him over those two years. And while I hadn't
been hoping that he'd come back and the good times would start again -
hadn't even really been missing the good times, being so busy having
new ones with the many people who hadn't moved out - the sudden
realisation that there was now no chance for those good times to occur
again eventually sank in. I never properly mourned him, never broke
down and cried - I wish I had, because sadness hung over me for
months, rather than being accepted and released, but that was the way
it was.
And that - well, a modi*** of that - is how I feel about RJ's death.
Those glorious early WOT books, when I felt I'd found _the_ fantasy
series to end all fantasy series, the one which, once completed, no
other fantasy would ever stand up to. And those great years
conversing on rasfwr-j, wherein I learned so much (honestly, I
strongly suspect that I would be a much lesser person if I hadn't had
that). But I got turned off the books, and the group waned, such that
my daily habit of checking it (often first thing, right after rolling
out of bed into my desk chair) has now turned into a "take a look once
in a while, when something reminds me of it" attitude. So while I
long ago let go of the hope that rasfwr-j would become the loud,
crowded amphitheatre it once was, or that the next WOT installment
would fill me with that sensawunda again, knowing with certainty that
it won't is a different feeling.
I think that sadness will probably sink in, and stay with me for days
or weeks even. RJ flavoured a huge chunk of my life. I was 12 or 13
when I first picked up tEotW, and I was 21 when I gave up on my last
reread and decided to just read the new installments as they came out,
but the years in between were spent deep in love with the series. And
there's something quite profoundly different about reading the words
of a living author versus reading those of a dead one.
-Mark Erikson
17 year old virgin again
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