Stardust

Several deaths this month. Yasser Arafat passes on and CSI gets interrupted for this piece of news. Audiences complain and the producer who okayed the decision gets axed. People care that he died, but not enough to miss out on the ending of that CSI episode.

Elsewhere on this side of the world, Iris Chang, who penned the controversial The Rape of Nanking, takes her own life with a gunshot to her head. She was 36. Reports state she was depressed.

Goh Sin Tub, Singapore writer, dies at age 77 after a stroke. He was the first author I met personally. I was fourteen, in secondary school, and just beginning to get interested in writing short stories. I'd submitted some shoddy work for his visit to the school, but he was very sweet about it, saying he liked what he read and that I should continue to write and read.

They've left their marks in our world, at least. Political history, books, culture. The physical essence of them turns to dust; years into the future, possibly stardust, so goes a song I once heard.

Posted by Monoceros at November 16, 2004 8:11 PM