Imagine There's No Heaven, It's Easy If You Try, No Hell Below Us, Above Us Only Sky, Imagine All The People, Living For Today

--"Imagine", John Lennon

I was having a discussion the other day about why I'm so fascinated with Rachel's story. What we came up with was the idea that she was so good and benevolent towards people in life. She had this hope that you rarely see in people. All her writings spoke of this insistence that, like Anne Frank before her, "despite everything, I still believe people are good at heart."

Then she died, which among other things, preserved her memory as such. She didn't have time to grow cynical. She didn't have time to come back to reality, as it were. Her views, her ideas, her spirit remain intact to this day.

Re-reading all her books fills me with a sense of inner peace all the more because I know she wasn't just saying it. She lived her whole life by these central precepts and was killed partially because of them.

It's that idea, that she died as close to being morally grounded as anyone could ever be that still fascinates me. There's no further years to tarnish that image and there never will be. She'll always remain as close to my idea of spiritual perfection as anyone because she never gave up those ideals and never lost her way like most of us do eventually.



In a world where people lose hope everyday, she can't. In a world where people become more jaded and disinterested, she can't. The idea that someone can live their whole life in some heightened sense of enlightenment is very fascinating for me. You need only look to see that very idea expressed in The Carisa Meridian to see that. The idea that someone can be perfect forever in memory in a way that they couldn't be in real life has been a running theme in my stories ever since I heard about Rachel's story.

The harsh reality of life is the longer you live, the more you change. It's all an eventual slide to normalcy, especially if you start out special. If you're superbly intelligent, eventually some people will catch up to you. If you possess some prodigious talent, eventually some people will be able to do it as well if not better than you. The younger you are when you peak, the harder it is to reconcile the fact that what made you unique can't be retained forever. Whatever you had, you'll lose sometime.

That's why I like Rachel. She never loses anything. Her appeal lies in the fact that unlike me, unlike you, she got to keep her beliefs. She stayed who she was. It's what makes me idolize her and jealous of her at the same time. She never had to worry about how she had changed or how far she had strayed from her notions of the future. She never had to contend with disappointment her life hadn't turned out like she expected. She never had to feel like she wasted any of her time here on Earth.

She's one of a lucky few that could have lived for today and been all the better for it. Who she was at the time of her death was completely sublime, and that perfect moment can't ever be dispelled. Her moment in the sun will never pass.

Unlike me, whose moment passed long ago.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers