Category Archives: death
On throwing your cigarette butt out of your car window
On surviving Friday night
Lots of people go out on Friday night to celebrate the end of the week, but I’m melting down at the end of the day with a couple of loads of laundry, some pork chops, a bit of Kentucky hooch, and Tony Bourdain traveling around Colombia. I have no energy to go out, drink in a bar, or mix it up with a lot of strangers. There is something liberating about Friday night that breaks all of the rules, knows no boundaries, respects no conventions, and, frankly, my dear, doesn’t give a damn after a hard week of frustrations and disappointments. Yet, I also know that my frustrations and disappointments are pretty minimal when I compare them to others, who may be fighting for their very lives. My problems don’t amount to a hill of beans when others are fighting pneumonia or just old age. But on Friday night none of that matters as the wounds heal, perspective relativizes all hurts, and time begins to push all problems into the past. If we did not have Friday nights, our lives would be unbearable, or almost. Friday night is time off from the day to day routine which burdens us, makes us serious and sad. On Friday night most of us don’t really have to work, don’t have a fixed bed time, and can do whatever we feel like doing, which really doesn’t happen too often. Friday night is about freedom, to think, to do, to act, to sleep, to eat, to drink, to do nothing if the spirit so leads us. On Friday nights we cast off the shackles of daily life and let our spirits free. It just has to happen from time to time.
On surviving Friday night
Lots of people go out on Friday night to celebrate the end of the week, but I’m melting down at the end of the day with a couple of loads of laundry, some pork chops, a bit of Kentucky hooch, and Tony Bourdain traveling around Colombia. I have no energy to go out, drink in a bar, or mix it up with a lot of strangers. There is something liberating about Friday night that breaks all of the rules, knows no boundaries, respects no conventions, and, frankly, my dear, doesn’t give a damn after a hard week of frustrations and disappointments. Yet, I also know that my frustrations and disappointments are pretty minimal when I compare them to others, who may be fighting for their very lives. My problems don’t amount to a hill of beans when others are fighting pneumonia or just old age. But on Friday night none of that matters as the wounds heal, perspective relativizes all hurts, and time begins to push all problems into the past. If we did not have Friday nights, our lives would be unbearable, or almost. Friday night is time off from the day to day routine which burdens us, makes us serious and sad. On Friday night most of us don’t really have to work, don’t have a fixed bed time, and can do whatever we feel like doing, which really doesn’t happen too often. Friday night is about freedom, to think, to do, to act, to sleep, to eat, to drink, to do nothing if the spirit so leads us. On Friday nights we cast off the shackles of daily life and let our spirits free. It just has to happen from time to time.
On the final journey (swimming the river Styx)
Since no mortal has ever made the return trip, none of us knows anything about that last trip across the river. Since the only two things that are guaranteed in this life are death and taxes, from time to time we all need to talk about both. Death has been a mystery since before people could write and the focus of writing ever since a quill scratched across a clean surface, leaving behind a muddled mess of liquid goo in lines of what looks like random bird tracks. All meditations about death are necessarily speculative, filled with metaphors and other poetic tropes which we use to mask the reality and finality of death. We seldom dwell on the face of death, deciding instead to close the casket, look off to the side, or close our eyes altogether. Philosophers, poets, artists have contributed to the mountainous pile of literature that attempts to answer the hard questions about death, but even that mountainous pile is little more than a big collection of guesses, speculation, and imagination. We shore up that pile as a shield against facing the reality that we will all have to face at some point. What we hate about death is the implied trope of change, and we all hate change. There are no guarantees about tomorrow or the day after, and since we are not in control, we fear change even more. Life will always be what you make of it, and death is also a part of life, so why fear it. Those of us who still walk the earth, are still saddened, however, when one of our number dies, hoping that that soul which once burned with so much fire, knows how to swim the cold, cold waters of the river Styx.
On the final journey (swimming the river Styx)
Since no mortal has ever made the return trip, none of us knows anything about that last trip across the river. Since the only two things that are guaranteed in this life are death and taxes, from time to time we all need to talk about both. Death has been a mystery since before people could write and the focus of writing ever since a quill scratched across a clean surface, leaving behind a muddled mess of liquid goo in lines of what looks like random bird tracks. All meditations about death are necessarily speculative, filled with metaphors and other poetic tropes which we use to mask the reality and finality of death. We seldom dwell on the face of death, deciding instead to close the casket, look off to the side, or close our eyes altogether. Philosophers, poets, artists have contributed to the mountainous pile of literature that attempts to answer the hard questions about death, but even that mountainous pile is little more than a big collection of guesses, speculation, and imagination. We shore up that pile as a shield against facing the reality that we will all have to face at some point. What we hate about death is the implied trope of change, and we all hate change. There are no guarantees about tomorrow or the day after, and since we are not in control, we fear change even more. Life will always be what you make of it, and death is also a part of life, so why fear it. Those of us who still walk the earth, are still saddened, however, when one of our number dies, hoping that that soul which once burned with so much fire, knows how to swim the cold, cold waters of the river Styx.
On butter
What can one say about butter that is not self-serving rationalization for indulging in the richest food on the planet, except for the fat around a cow’s liver? I, for one, love butter, but I think that this is a relationship that is best left alone. Overindulgence in butter is the road to perdition in many ways–cholesterol, heart disease, obesity, hypertension. Yet, I won’t put oleo on my toast because using a petroleum product would be worse. You see, butter has that taste that just sucks you in and hypnotizes your taste buds and seduces your good judgement. You ever sauté garlic in butter? Maybe throw in a few over-sized shrimp, a pinch of hot red pepper and a quarter cup of white wine? You’d know if you had. Butter is a synecdoche for all of our overindulgence and overeating, and butter stands out as a symbol of our own success which may be our very undoing. In itself, there is nothing wrong with eating some butter. I’m from a dairy state, Minnesota, where the local denizens having been consuming dairy products for over a century and a half, and the only long-lasting result is extended life-spans. We have collectively stopped smoking, and although we still drink a bit and carry around an extra pound or two, we are pretty healthy in spite of the butter we consume. What would pancakes be without butter? What would chocolate frosting be without butter? Lumpy and tasteless. Take away their butter and people would stop making toast and life would cease to have meaning. Can you really eat lobster without a nice butter sauce to dip it in? Chicken fried in butter is much better than chicken fried in mystery oil. Yet butter gets a bad reputation because of all that juicy cholesterol. I often wonder if it might be less the cholesterol we consume and more our own inactivity which hurts us. So getting off the couch and into the wide open spaces is more important than skimping on the butter for our bagel.
On butter
On walking in the snow
Walking in the snow is balm to the jagged nerves that the holidays tend to exacerbate. While it was snowing a couple of days ago, I went out for a walk to think about things. Into all lives a certain amount of chaos will always fall: people get older, they get sick and die, or they spend extended amounts of time in the process of dying. This isn’t morbid, it’s just real. The snow falls and reminds me that the seasons change, time goes by, we all get older, everything changes, nothing stays the same except the snow. Walking in the snow reminded me of all the other times in my life that I have walked in the snow–in Minnesota, in Spain, in Texas, in Nevada, in Canada. The snow is silent, gentle, and impersonal–it falls on the just and the unjust equally, and it always will. It covers the sleeping landscape, giving the earth a chance to sleep under an icy blanket, a white death shroud that lovingly envelops everything. When you walk in the snow, you become a part of the shroud, you are a part of death, the silence of the falling snow, the eternity of a single moment. A single snow flake is proof that the entire universe moves towards lowest energy, towards entropy, and we are only incidental players on a universal stage.
On walking in the snow
Walking in the snow is balm to the jagged nerves that the holidays tend to exacerbate. While it was snowing a couple of days ago, I went out for a walk to think about things. Into all lives a certain amount of chaos will always fall: people get older, they get sick and die, or they spend extended amounts of time in the process of dying. This isn’t morbid, it’s just real. The snow falls and reminds me that the seasons change, time goes by, we all get older, everything changes, nothing stays the same except the snow. Walking in the snow reminded me of all the other times in my life that I have walked in the snow–in Minnesota, in Spain, in Texas, in Nevada, in Canada. The snow is silent, gentle, and impersonal–it falls on the just and the unjust equally, and it always will. It covers the sleeping landscape, giving the earth a chance to sleep under an icy blanket, a white death shroud that lovingly envelops everything. When you walk in the snow, you become a part of the shroud, you are a part of death, the silence of the falling snow, the eternity of a single moment. A single snow flake is proof that the entire universe moves towards lowest energy, towards entropy, and we are only incidental players on a universal stage.