Little Reviews: Poem for Friday and Alan Rickman

Sonnet XLVIII
By William Shakespeare

How careful was I when I took my way,
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,
That to my use it might unused stay
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!
But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,
Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.
Thee have I not locked up in any chest,
Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,
Within the gentle closure of my breast,
From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;
And even thence thou wilt be stol'n I fear,
For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

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I was very sad when David Bowie died, though that was as much for other people as for myself. I have several friends whose lives were impacted in a major way by Bowie's unconventional performance of his gender and sexuality, but because I lean toward conventional, I don't think he influenced my life at the same visceral, vital level. When I read this morning that Alan Rickman had died, though, it was like a personal punch in the gut. As with Bowie, no one knew he was ill, so there was no way to be prepared; Cheryl and I were talking about him last night just before we logged off to go to bed. Dozens of friends may be reading this whom I met because we both loved Alan Rickman. He was a fixture in my life since college, not on a daily basis, but someone whose influence was felt like a long-distance friend who holds a group together.

Because I was labeled ridiculous and shallow earlier in the week by someone I "know" only online for mourning a celebrity I didn't "know" at all, I thought I would post some photos of some of the ways in which Alan Rickman impacted my life. These are things I did and people I did them with in large part because of movies in which Rickman played a major role; of course I might have gone to Oxford without Harry Potter or Goblin Valley without Galaxy Quest, but part of the reason they wound up on a must-see-now list was because of his movies and the contributions he made to their success, and of course my kids might have become Harry Potter fans based only on the books, but I'll never know exactly how much the films influenced the depth and longevity of their interest. I wish the best to his family and hope his wife knows just how much he was appreciated.