Michael Jackson is Dead.

Michael Jackson is dead. He was 50 years old. For some reason, I am shocked by the news. I assumed Michael Jackson would always be around -- live to be 100, his face looking odder and odder with the never ending surgery. Robbed of a childhood -- but always, in his heart -- a boy who never grew up...he was an explosive mix of talent, time, and place. Fame and fortune was a God to him, and a Devil. Myself, I was never a huge fan of his, but in the 1980s you couldn't get away from him, Michael Jackson was everywhere...everywhere. How do you get to be that famous, that affluent, and not begin to crack? Go anywhere, do anything, whatever you want, people all saying "Yes" and holding the door open for you. And when did the nightmare begin? Or was it a nightmare, for Michael, all along?

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I go out to Maywood, two towns down the road, to pay a bill. While I'm driving, I have parts of Michael Jackson songs, like a musical collage, playing in my brain -- it is a bit irritating. The fabulous dancing he did in the 1980s looks a bit silly, now. They way he'd grab his crotch while doing short pelvic thrusts, wearing one white glove, the white socks, fedora, all of it.

I can't get Michael Jackson out of my head, because millions of people are thinking about him, right now. He took us on a long, strange trip. He was emulated, admired, idolized, mocked, ridiculed -- he reached his zenith, we watched him spiral down, now he's gone.

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When I get home, I read about Michael Jackson. Article after article. The whole world has something to say. One writer postulated Michael Jackson died of a broken heart, because Michael wanted to be loved so much, that it was impossible to satisfy this need to be loved.

Everybody gets their heart broken. It is guaranteed, just like death, that your heart will get completely broken. A rabbi said, to know how to love, and really love -- your heart has to be broken, first. Totally shattered. Then we figure out how to go on, and not give up on love, and hopefully we've learned to give a bit more, when it comes to love.

It could be that Michael Jackson died, because he didn't know how to give -- he could "give" being up on the stage, but when that part of his life ended, he couldn't figure out how to really connect with people.

But I don't think we'll ever know the whole story. I do know it is easy to get lost, it is easy to lose yourself -- and once you've lost yourself, it is hard to rediscover what that "You", was. Fame, fortune, and admirers only complicate things.

Take care, Michael, wherever you are.