I don’t know if reading all of the amazing quotes from Lil B’s lecture tonight at NYU is making me think a lot today or what, but I’m going to get a little personal for a second.
I was waiting at the McElroy bus stop waiting for the bus back to Newton when I saw that up there. It’s a missing poster for Franco Garcia, a Boston College student who had been missing since February. They’ve been plastered all around campus for weeks. I’ve seen that face probably a thousand times by now. I didn’t know Franco at all and I didn’t have any information regarding what had happened to him, so, after some slight initial sadness, I ended up ignoring the story after a few days. After a week or two my friends and I came to the realization that he had to be dead by now. We even joked that he was definitely at the bottom of the Reservoir, and they should just scuba-dive down there or something and find him.
This morning, April 11, I read an email from BC informing me that Franco Garcia’s body was found in the Res. It made me feel a little sad for a second, and then I thought to myself that we were right all along. I went about the rest of my day without really thinking about Franco any more, until I saw that poster in a trash can at the Mac bus stop while waiting to go back to my dorm.
Just that image, his face peeking out from under some garbage, made me feel really sad. Sad that he was dead, and at such a young age. Sad for his family and friends. Sad about the fact that we may never know what really happened that night. And sad that, for the first time, any semblance of hope was gone for finding Franco alive. His missing poster was in the trash. No one would be looking for him anymore. He’s gone, forever.
I never knew Franco Garcia, and never will. But his story and that image made me think a lot about the people with me at BC, and people in general. I’m generally a decent, nice guy who treats people with respect, but I could always do better. We can all treat people better and care about them more. And if we all improve how we treat people and interact with them even just a little bit, maybe the next college kid out at a bar who gets into a bad situation won’t end up like Franco.
Tonight during his lecture at NYU, Lil B said this: “Every single person you meet, look at them like a golden million dollar baby.” We really should. RIP Franco Garcia.
I didn’t know Franco personally, but we have a lot of mutual friends, so I recognized him immediately after he went missing. I guess it was different for my group, but we were both shocked and terrified when he wasn’t found in the reservoir the first time, so seeing his face and knowing his car was still on campus as evidence was just this really stressful background to the past 6 weeks because we imagined so many horrible possibilities, all while trying to hope he was somewhere safe.
All Wednesday walking around after I heard that his body had been found, I was wondering when the posters would come down, like if there would be a group walking around to remove them like when they were put up, or if it would be left up to individuals to see them and remove them.
I couldn’t bring myself to take any of them down personally, but today in Carney I saw on one of the doors that not only had someone left the poster up, but they had taped a paper saying “Rest in Peace” right next to it, and I almost started crying. I’ve gotten so used to seeing his face around, and I never even met him, that it just felt like the only tribute that was really fitting.
PLEASE REBLOG THIS. I’M BEGGING YOU.
TWEET CELEBRITIES FOR HELP. GET OUT THE WORD. PLEASE.
HELP TO FIND HIM.
Rainbowffiti
Tree Fractals
“Goodnight Nothing”
I am the little mouse who surveys
His war-torn orange wasteland
Where fires flick to the ticks of time,
Burning breakfast bowls and bed frames,
While zeppelin balloons rise above
The bunnies and bears
Into the sickly sour lime-green sky
Ready to bombard the feline beasts
That spar over a ball of yarn
(One tigress lies dead, face-first
On the charred and churning Earth).
Dizzy and faint I climb
To some indistinct summit and gaze
Incredulously at the idolatrous
Wonder: A moon-jumping golden calf
Flying through the cosmos trips
On a crescent lunar limb and tumbles
Into our bed of flames with a comic flare.
Goodnight nothing everywhere.
Bapst
Dusk at BC
