Obituary to A Love

James Claire (1969-2011)

James Claire writer and Journalist, passed last night from complications of a broken heart.

A solitary , semi-recluse everything James was and did, defied his desire to sink into the shadows. In his early career he sought  fame and fortune, the loss of a close childhood friend scarred him deeply, he sought neither ever since.

An author of 15 books in his chosen career, through out his lifetime it was his unchosen career as a writer which gave him the most pleasure but which held the greatest challenge. A want-to-chef he found it hard to get people to eat his dishes, yet the same people ate up his words in magazines around the world under numerous pseudonyms, unbeknownst to them.

A desire to teach others the beauty of what he had learnt in life and had seen, continually pulled at him to write. Writing was his window to the world under which he used assumed names where possible so as to remain untouched by the scathing words of those who desired not to listen and to believe.  

In the end his theory of death was similar to one he had in regards his beloved writing. “Perhaps inside us all, we have only a certain number of words to express, once we have penned them, then we are done”.

Perhaps James had used his allocation of words and was therefore predicated to expire.

For anyone who knew James for any period of time they would understand that retirement was never actually an option.

He had lived, loved and travelled far.  Was an over achiever, he rarely rested long.

James died single and alone, had never married and despite rumours had fathered no children he was aware of.

He was in the words of Star Trek, ‘All about the journey not the destination”.

As a child he heard romanticised stories of his merchant navy uncle, in his thirties he sampled the sea life for himself and fell in love. Thereafter, itchy feet  stopped James from settling for long, anywhere or with anyone.

To the day he chose to pass, he was still searching for the right person and the right place to live. His writing, whilst it had been the glue which held his soul together for many decades, had also been his ruin.

No matter how amazing a relationship nor how stunning a city in which he lived, he had always been able, in his own mind and by his own hand,  to paint a more vibrant, amorous, sensuous world with words .

 Life on earth, in the end, could simply not live up to his own expectations. 

It was once said of Robert F Kennedy at his eulogy “ he saw the wrongs and sought to right them” similar could also be said of James “ he often saw perfection but could always write it better”.

Author of more than a dozen books, and writer for numerous magazines throughout his lifetime he was as a person very unknown. 

Few every really got the chance to intimately see the true soul.

One that did, hurt him more than he could ever have imagined possible. A speaker of the truth, he was not believed, words had finally failed him and he fell silent.

To himself he always felt he had never reached his own potential. The world was not ready for him. His need to work to pay the bills sapped him of the valuable time he sought to write fulltime.

He always believed that inside of him was a Pulitzer prize winning novel, in the end he could wait no longer for it to be released by his own mind, and put pen to paper. 

The only way to stop the self-hatred for never penning such beauty was to stop the source of his pain for good.

In his own words, “to have never fulfilled ones own desires of self , is to hate the self which is unfulfilled.”

James Claire was forty-three years old when his heart broke for the final time.