Word Is Bond

So the other day, I was talk­ing with Alice H, and she was telling me about the life of Chuck Palah­niuk. After hear­ing about it, I kinda under­stand why his books are so nihilis­tic. But one story in par­tic­u­lar is very inter­est­ing to me.

Like Chuck, I con­sider myself a healthy skep­tic. I acknowl­edge that there are things in the world beyond my com­pre­hen­sion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to or try to under­stand. Or at least expe­ri­ence. That’s why I say I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m always down for vis­it­ing “super­nat­ural” places. I guess I want to be proven wrong.

If you were to sud­denly die, who would your ghost go visit?

What does it mean at the end of the story, where Chuck’s father vis­its his mother and his sis­ter, but not him? Does the lack of words mean they lacked a bond? Or maybe it’s like in Ken­shin, when he doesn’t say good-​bye to Kaoru because as the strongest bond, she was the only one could get him to not leave.

I ask because I’m going to be leav­ing in the next week to go to Min­nesota for a while to help out with a fam­ily emer­gency. Don’t worry, it’s not a mat­ter of life and death or any­thing. But yeah, I’ll be qui­etly mak­ing my rounds to say good-​bye. If you have free time this week­end, I’d love to hang out with you. And if we don’t hang out, it’s not like I’m actu­ally dead. There’s always our dreams. Or IMs.

Tags: Alice H, Books, Family