(no subject)
Aug. 5th, 2002 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strredwolfStellos, a great furry artist, pushing realism inside inflation, dead July 11th. Word has just reached us here on Canmeph 2, posted off of his website and copies to HyperFurs. Read on for a message from Mark Stretch...
On July 11, Stellos drove up to the mountains to renew his marriage vows. He did not show up at work the next day. He was found by the police in the back of his pickup truck, where he and his wife had been sleeping. The apparent cause of death was a leaking propane appliance in the camper shell with them.
I only learned about this last Wednesday. It is still very hard for me to even face this, to come to grips with something so huge. I feel as though something has been ripped out of my guts. It seems impossible, and yet I must accept the reality of it.
I had known Stellos for over ten years. We first met because of a BBS called K&S, brought together by an accidental posting of one of my stories by a member named Unicorn. The story had my name and home address at the top, and I would have stripped that off had I known that it was going to be publically posted. As it turned out, it was a lucky accident, because it introduced me to one of the most fascinating and creative people I've ever known. We've been trading art,letters and stories ever since.
A large part of my artwork was inspired by him, if not directly, then
at least by the fact that I knew that he would always be an
appreciative audience, and would never be repelled by anything that I
showed him. In fact, he often embellished upon my ideas and took them
farther than I dared, or offered suggestions and encouragement.
He was a well-read, intelligent man, with viewpoints that differed
greatly from the mainstream, among whom I had not previously counted
myself. I enjoyed our long conversations about philosophy, the nature
of life and existence. I don't think I ever quite understood what he
was trying to tell me, but I feel that I'm slightly more open-minded
for having made the attempt. I regret any frustration that he might
have felt in trying to overcome my obstinance.
I fear that I am violating his wishes in posting an official notice
like this. He had often said that he didn't want any notice paid of
him if anything happened to take him off this earth. He wanted me to
just tell everybody that he had decided to stop drawing, and had
dropped out of the furry scene.
I could almost sympathize with that. After all, my chosen end would
be to have this carcass dumped in the woods and return some food value
to the planet that has sustained me. But still ... to me, I felt that
he was a friend, and I was torn up enough that I didn't find out until
two weeks later that he was gone --that my last Email to him, was, in
fact, over a day after he was gone.
Karno, with his usual admirable clarity of thought, put it into focus
for me.
"From my point of wiew, keeping me in ignorance would have been
very cruel. Should I have believed my friend was still alive,
but not willing to say a single word to me, anymore?"
I think that many people on this list felt that he was a friend, and
for all those people whose lives he touched to not know why he no
longer spoke to them would, I agree, be cruel. He made much bigger
emotional ripples in his life than he could ever have been aware. His
passing leaves a hole in my heart which will be with me until I follow
him.
In going through some of the files I have from him, I found a note
that seems appropriate. I will leave you all, then, with this last
thought from the man himself, written as an addendum to his will,
almost a year ago, and I send this out, and the ripples of his death
spread ever farther. Goodbye, friend. I hope you're right and I'm
wrong about eternity.
===============================================
Last Woids:
Mysteriously the dead and dying seem to be taken more
seriously. So in case
death magnifies
whatever of my credibility remains, I have some
suggestions.
Lighten up. Performance anxiety and taking things
(especially one's self) too
seriously do an awful
lot to degrade quality of life. It seems little does
as much to degrade life as
desperate efforts to
improve it. We may have more to fear than fear itself,
but only rarely does
anything do more
damage than our fear.
Learn different paradigms. I don't mean the trivial
"thinking outside the box"
business culture buzz
word. There are many fundamentally different ways of
looking at the world.
Everybody uses at
least one, you don't consciously perceive without one.
If you learn just one
more paradigm you'll
get a vastly expanded view of the world and an even
more greatly expanded view
of your self. I
recommend looking at things with at least three
paradigms, the more
fundamentally different and
mutually exclusive the better.
Try to avoid making other people unhappy. This goes
with "lighten up."
Understand that in the
complementarity of consciousness, we share a continuum
of consciousness as well
as being
particular individuals-- like a photon is wave and
particle. (You can consider
this literal or
metaphorical.) Happiness that seems to come through
making others unhappy will
be less
satisfying and shorter lived than that coming through
making others happier.
And that includes
taking it easy on those that seem to be screwing
things up. It's not
appeasement to try to heal
rather than punish.
I know these ideas are unoriginal and unimpressive.
Too bad. The magic is in
the application. I
feel it is my responsibility to try to bring this to
people's attention. Now
I'm done. You're on your
own.
Killer Links:
Mercifully everything important I have to say seems
already to have been said
by others, and
more compellingly than I could hope to achieve. So
here are some cool links
from beyond the
grave. (Or hot links, if Christian dogma is correct.)
Alfie Kohn: http://www.alfiekohn.org/
Institute of Noetic Sciences: http://www.ions.org/
Rupert Sheldrake: http://www.sheldrake.org/
So... bye!
I'm going home.
Stellos -- (written November 2001)
On July 11, Stellos drove up to the mountains to renew his marriage vows. He did not show up at work the next day. He was found by the police in the back of his pickup truck, where he and his wife had been sleeping. The apparent cause of death was a leaking propane appliance in the camper shell with them.
I only learned about this last Wednesday. It is still very hard for me to even face this, to come to grips with something so huge. I feel as though something has been ripped out of my guts. It seems impossible, and yet I must accept the reality of it.
I had known Stellos for over ten years. We first met because of a BBS called K&S, brought together by an accidental posting of one of my stories by a member named Unicorn. The story had my name and home address at the top, and I would have stripped that off had I known that it was going to be publically posted. As it turned out, it was a lucky accident, because it introduced me to one of the most fascinating and creative people I've ever known. We've been trading art,letters and stories ever since.
A large part of my artwork was inspired by him, if not directly, then
at least by the fact that I knew that he would always be an
appreciative audience, and would never be repelled by anything that I
showed him. In fact, he often embellished upon my ideas and took them
farther than I dared, or offered suggestions and encouragement.
He was a well-read, intelligent man, with viewpoints that differed
greatly from the mainstream, among whom I had not previously counted
myself. I enjoyed our long conversations about philosophy, the nature
of life and existence. I don't think I ever quite understood what he
was trying to tell me, but I feel that I'm slightly more open-minded
for having made the attempt. I regret any frustration that he might
have felt in trying to overcome my obstinance.
I fear that I am violating his wishes in posting an official notice
like this. He had often said that he didn't want any notice paid of
him if anything happened to take him off this earth. He wanted me to
just tell everybody that he had decided to stop drawing, and had
dropped out of the furry scene.
I could almost sympathize with that. After all, my chosen end would
be to have this carcass dumped in the woods and return some food value
to the planet that has sustained me. But still ... to me, I felt that
he was a friend, and I was torn up enough that I didn't find out until
two weeks later that he was gone --that my last Email to him, was, in
fact, over a day after he was gone.
Karno, with his usual admirable clarity of thought, put it into focus
for me.
"From my point of wiew, keeping me in ignorance would have been
very cruel. Should I have believed my friend was still alive,
but not willing to say a single word to me, anymore?"
I think that many people on this list felt that he was a friend, and
for all those people whose lives he touched to not know why he no
longer spoke to them would, I agree, be cruel. He made much bigger
emotional ripples in his life than he could ever have been aware. His
passing leaves a hole in my heart which will be with me until I follow
him.
In going through some of the files I have from him, I found a note
that seems appropriate. I will leave you all, then, with this last
thought from the man himself, written as an addendum to his will,
almost a year ago, and I send this out, and the ripples of his death
spread ever farther. Goodbye, friend. I hope you're right and I'm
wrong about eternity.
===============================================
Last Woids:
Mysteriously the dead and dying seem to be taken more
seriously. So in case
death magnifies
whatever of my credibility remains, I have some
suggestions.
Lighten up. Performance anxiety and taking things
(especially one's self) too
seriously do an awful
lot to degrade quality of life. It seems little does
as much to degrade life as
desperate efforts to
improve it. We may have more to fear than fear itself,
but only rarely does
anything do more
damage than our fear.
Learn different paradigms. I don't mean the trivial
"thinking outside the box"
business culture buzz
word. There are many fundamentally different ways of
looking at the world.
Everybody uses at
least one, you don't consciously perceive without one.
If you learn just one
more paradigm you'll
get a vastly expanded view of the world and an even
more greatly expanded view
of your self. I
recommend looking at things with at least three
paradigms, the more
fundamentally different and
mutually exclusive the better.
Try to avoid making other people unhappy. This goes
with "lighten up."
Understand that in the
complementarity of consciousness, we share a continuum
of consciousness as well
as being
particular individuals-- like a photon is wave and
particle. (You can consider
this literal or
metaphorical.) Happiness that seems to come through
making others unhappy will
be less
satisfying and shorter lived than that coming through
making others happier.
And that includes
taking it easy on those that seem to be screwing
things up. It's not
appeasement to try to heal
rather than punish.
I know these ideas are unoriginal and unimpressive.
Too bad. The magic is in
the application. I
feel it is my responsibility to try to bring this to
people's attention. Now
I'm done. You're on your
own.
Killer Links:
Mercifully everything important I have to say seems
already to have been said
by others, and
more compellingly than I could hope to achieve. So
here are some cool links
from beyond the
grave. (Or hot links, if Christian dogma is correct.)
Alfie Kohn: http://www.alfiekohn.org/
Institute of Noetic Sciences: http://www.ions.org/
Rupert Sheldrake: http://www.sheldrake.org/
So... bye!
I'm going home.
Stellos -- (written November 2001)
