Alizah Salario

I don’t know Cameron Dabaghi , but I’m going to imagine who he was for a few moments. I’m first going to think about why people choose to take their own lives. I know all the psych book answers, but they don’t seem sufficient. Then I’m going to think about why someone so young would choose such a dramatic, visible way to die. Then I’ll ask myself the obvious question: of all the ways to go, what would prompt someone to choose to plummet 86 floors from the Empire State Building?

Then I’m going to wonder what it looked like on the way down, who might have seen him falling, if he ever had a moment of unfettered freedom before splattering on the pavement, and when, precisely, he actually died.

It doesn’t seem fair to speculate on the life of a total stranger, but I’m doing it anyway. It is facile to stay that suicide is an escape, and that for some, it seems the only option when hopelessness and desperation take hold.  Once one decides to die, how does one decide to go? The living never get to hear the stories. Some likely go the way of least resistance, at least pain-wise. Others, however, think of the impact on others.  I imagine that Cameron didn’t feel heard, because he didn’t go quietly or privately. Had he overdosed in his dorm room at Yale, we likely would never have know his name. A tale of torment and anguish needs a dramatic finish, and I wonder if he jumped simply because he wanted a powerful ending to his story.

What is it with me and war movies these days? Perhaps I’m a little late to see the connection between HBO’s The Pacific and The Hurt Locker, but I can’t stop trying to understand what I will never full comprehend.

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“In the latter half of the last century, journalism mutated from a relatively prestige-free trade into a hoity-toity profession that, like medicine and law, involves graduate degrees and six-figure salaries. But journalism is not a profession, or even a trade, really. It’s an act. And anyone who performs that act is, at that moment, a journalist.”  From Jeff Bercovici’s latest Op-Ed: The New Journalism

Only a few weeks after I’d denounced my religion, I found myself celebrating Purim. (Long story, and not one I’m going to tell here. )  I started out with a simple costume (hot pink tights and a sequenced headband) at a small singles gathering. I drank one Red Bull and vodka on an empty stomach. By the time I ended up at temple, my headband was off and I was slightly tipsy. Initially I felt a little ashamed, until I saw the state of affairs that awaited.

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