obits
knot meat right after my dad died, they made me see a therapist. this was before i knew as i do post-psychology degree that most of these people have no bird's eye view to advise from, let alone any good reasons for one path over another even if they can give you the likely outcomes and the causes and effects of human interaction. the best they can say is if you want this, then do this. so basically most therapists were just like you, only they were curious and had too much time on their hands, so they actually went about figuring out why they kept having reoccurring dreams about singing ferrets tickling their favorite aunt. so anyways, i'm at this therapist and he gives me a ball of clay and says, express how you feel about your father's death using the clay. so i balled the clay up and threw it at him. apparently that was an invalid mode of expression. when i was in high school i wanted brother john to be my father. he was a good teacher, but i was more or less hoping he could tell me what to do with my life. i can't help but feel if my father was alive he could tell me, this is what to do, or this isn't. or even if this feels fake, it's the best you can do, take it from someone who tried. it's probably irrational to think this is true. perhaps if i died tomorrow some people really would believe i was taking wonderful secrets to the grave with me. it might be true with a little imagination. the feelings we bring to any conversation usually are greater than the scope of that conversation or any conversation we've ever had, but each communication with another is a summation, a miniture of the entire scope. the sistine chapel on a pin. and blah! i think most people have the beginning and middle of a great novel pretty much ready to go. it's the ending that's hard. if you have the ending, it would seem you've settled some large issues within your own life, and who needs to write a book at that point anyways? you've got conclusions! i probably would have trouble listening to the advice it would seem my father would give, seeing that he lived the "decent" life and ended up dying young and having worked so long to fall short of the assumed payday. or maybe he had different assumptions about what worth is. i never got to ask him though if he really believed it. it seems my mom believes it. i can't tell them that sometimes on the drive back to law school i want to keep driving. or you think, perhaps these loved ones are the best thing i have, but what if i still want to walk away? what if that seems more loving, more honest, or at the very least no less honest or loving. i don't even mean to be melodramatic about it. that's the thing. it'd be no great loss to the world if i were to keep driving. even their pain is a day or a year or a lifetime, but barely a scratch or warble in the late night radio show of the universe. caller we've lost you. but we cannot measure human lives like that. we measure tea in teaspoons i suppose. so my uncle bill died. he seemed as noble a man as i've met. it's hard knowing someone cool is gone that you knew more about than others you know did. you want them to know, but to show them your only method is to embody the coolness, and that would take a whole lifetime. and you just want to be associated with the coolness anyways. even my telling you that i'm aware i just want to be associated with the coolness is me trying to be coolness. and even me telling you that i'm aware of that strategy is just another same strategy. so he had a nice obituary. and well it is obscene to reduce a lifetime to a paragraph, because it shows you how silly the idea of a life is in a moment. in a moment, is a lifetime of this or that persuasive or not? if you're succinct enough, could you reduce a life to a sentence? then a word? then an utterance? the single utterance is the obituary common to all humanity. but we want details! this i feel is my first true blog. to use a newly acquired metaphor, sometimes i wonder if i can't file a motion to dismiss the litigation that is this life. i mean, even if any alleged facts are true, is there still a case? what facts have to be alleged for the trial to be worth it, valid? we know the hows and the whats. there are geniuses, idiots, birds of prey hunting at night, fights over money and the sex it represents. there are tomes dedicated to the love of a lifetime, and to the strategies of mate selection and sperm competition and the more minimal female sexual refractory time. there are sad widowed mothers falling asleep from wine halfway through their daily video rental. and brothers pretending they care who their sister fucks when really it could be pirates if she's happy, because if you don't know what makes you happy, what a prick you'd be to tell them. and there's math to describe this, and law to describe that, and poetry and such. but there's still no why. but assume to proceed. and even when you try and say something tragic.... when you think there's people who work everyday to achieve the freedom from hunger and sickness to even be able to assume or be ambivalent...you can't help but also remember the ridiculous. that there could be a muppet mariachi band, or that eartha kitt probably fingered herself at least once in her lifetime. and a boner reminds you real quick what philosophy's for. or a good shit. you never can really talk to your uncle bill enough. or maybe you could've. but you probably still won't next time, because what can they tell you, that you don't already have shoved in your face every morning you wake up? and so it doesn't really matter to you much if you have dick friends, or even if you're a dick because the differences which justify judgment and annoyance don't really seem as sweeping and persuasive as the commonalities which lean towards compassion and forgetfulness if not forgiveness. because everyone's trying something. if you're human you're an idiot. but it's not a bad thing. what do you think the ridiculous thoughts were during the black plague or other dark periods. some people must've had them. some priest consumed by it, must've been all "no matter how many angels fit on the head of a pin, it probably isn't as many devils fit in this nasty pustule here" i forgive myself for saying you all the time when i think it's clear i'm talking about me. perhaps that's why i don't feel as required to tell any of this narratively. the ideas we have about life are the real narrative, and sometimes we reach an end too soon. those stupid choose your own adventure books from childhood. "sorry, you've reached an undermining concept, return to the start". earlier in the day i was talking about the whole evolutionary psychology of sexual mores, and i brought up the fact that a lot of monkey females have a red ass when they're capable of mating which makes guarding your investment so much easier. a friend said, humans have their own markings, just more subtle. i said, too bad our intellect is not equipped for the subtlety. well, knowing life doesn't make you immune to it. well this drifted off. but i think this is the kind of speech i'd give at a funeral these days. i'd perhaps sing a couple of lines from "I am, I said," by Neil Diamond. And just keep talking. and the dead wouldn't talk. when you're alone, doesn't reality seem so much more negotiable? as if you could actually pray to some god within the you which contains the sky, and say, look i've changed my mind about what i want to be real. i want my father back, i want you back. i want to own the sky again. and if not, i want the polar ice caps to melt. i want the world to fall to the basic, to be on the verge of destruction, to mirror more what we all feel, to authenticate our existence, to not lull us away from vigorously asserting what little we have in the face of all we haven't. back to the practical. my uncle bill was a good man. played the accordion. to save me time for when she dies, his wife, my aunt noreen, was a good woman. as far as i could tell. 040823
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