The Babblings of a Whimsical-Brainpan is going

Erin, the blogger who until today has identified herself only as Whim, has decided to shut down her site, The Babblings of a Whimsical-Brainpan. If you've never read it before - well, it's too late. There's nothing left but the farewell post.

If you haven't read it, you don't know what you've missed. Whim - Erin - was nearly killed in a fire about fifteen years ago. Two bastards had stolen credit card information from one of the tenants in the building where she was living and used it to buy a $200 jacket. To cover up the evidence of their crime, they decided to burn the building down and kill everyone in it. Using an accellerant - kerosene, I think - they torched the exits, and then the building. Several people died. One girl, who was visiting her fiance (who died in the fire) lost her legs. More people would have died if the building hadn't been mostly empty since people were visiting relatives for Christmas.

Whim - Erin - awoke to find her building on fire and escape impossible except through her third-story window. She found herself hanging from the windowsill by her hands as she awaited rescue. The heat of the fire burned her hands, nearly searing them off. Finally she made the conscious decision to let go and accept whatever the consequences were. She fell three stories and landed on her back, breaking her neck. A rescuer saved her from blindness when he shielded her eyes as the final, explosive combustion of the contents of her apartment caused her window to explode, raining down shards of glass upon her paralyzed body.

She got better. Her broken neck healed. Her thoroughly cooked hands were repaired, after many surgeries and months of being sewn into her own hips, to a low level of functionality, enough to allow her to type and paint and do daily tasks with great difficulty. Her lungs eventually cleared themselves of the smoke she had inhaled. But the fire left other, lasting scars.

(The two arsonists were eventually caught, but not until after they had killed again, and set another fire. This time the fire was to cover up the rape and murder of another young woman. Her brother found her, her dead body warmed by the fire around her, and attempted to revive her, not knowing that her throat had been slashed through to her windpipe - until he pinched her nostrils, blew into her mouth, and was covered with a spray of blood from her gaping neck.)

I may not have all the facts right above. I am recalling them from memory, from the memory of the first time I encountered Erin's blog on January 27, 2007, when I sat down and read straight through all of the posts that recalled the story of the fire.

Now those posts are gone. That story is gone. But not forever, I hope.

Erin has been working on putting her story together into a book. It's been rough going, and slow going. Getting a book published always is. But hers is a compelling story, one that I could imagine garnering major media attention once it reaches wide release. Oprah. Stuff like that.

I'm hoping that this blog deletion is preliminary to that book finally coming out. I can imagine a publisher saying, "Why would anyone need to buy your book when you're giving the story away for free?" But I don't know.

Erin's story has been a major inspiration to me to shut my whiny self up at get on with doing the things that need to be done. I won't pretend to know what Erin is planning. But I wish her the best. And I look forward to seeing her book come out.