No, said Mr UD. “Not irony. You leave the world in the place that meant most to you…”
UD quoted the statement in my title about irony to Mr UD as he ate breakfast.
It’s from a blog written by someone who knew Nora Miller, a Wesleyan student who a few days ago immolated herself on the university running field. Miller was a massively award-winning track star, first at Stanford, and then at Wesleyan, where she majored in film.
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Like many suicides among the intense and intensely promising, this one was as expressive as it was enigmatic. It meant, it meant, it meant. It meant like hell. But what did it mean?
A student writes in the Wesleyan campus paper:
Self-immolation is not a quiet act of suicide; it is clearly an intentional statement. I understand that the University had to respect the parent’s wishes to keep details about Nora and her death private, but when a suicide occurs in such a public way on campus property, it is the student body’s right to be able to mourn [publicly] and to be given time to process and think about what has happened.
It bothers this writer that Wesleyan hasn’t said and done more about the event; she suggests that a day be set aside for campus reflection. In this, she registers the staggering impact of the gesture. More should be made of it…
[A] status update on a Facebook account under Miller’s name read, “when there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire,” a lyric from a track by the band Stars.
Which made UD think of Cocteau’s famous answer.
Someone once asked Jean Cocteau, “Suppose your house were on fire and you could remove only one thing. What would you take?”
Cocteau considered, then said, “I would take the fire.”
There’s the swift intensity of life; there’s life burnt out.
I encountered the Cocteau story in Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, a novel about our subterranean fires.
February 7th, 2012 at 2:00PM
[…] who shot himself in the head in the middle of Harvard Yard a few years ago, on a busy morning. Or Nora Miller, who, on another busy morning, immolated herself on the Wesleyan University running field where she […]
September 29th, 2012 at 12:25PM
[…] University of Montana’s outstanding athlete in 1975″ killed himself on that campus. Nora Miller, a Wesleyan track star, killed herself on the […]