At the dinner table 5 days ago the thought popped in my head, connected to some now unknown synapse: "I need to write my will" I said aloud in the middle of a story. Here are the parts I care to share, there is no will besides this one, nor will there be for some time. When it is eventually found in the drawer of an abandoned house at the end of a series of clues that start with the cocktail napkin in my jacket pocket (which must be baked under a heat lamp for the lemon words to appear), my edited Will can't have changed that drastically from these thoughts.
I prepare myself for death a couple times a day, usually when I'm driving my car, always when there is thunder and occasionally when I leave loved ones. I'll say goodnight or goodbye knowing that I won't wake up, that I'll be hit by a drunk driver, and that the lightning bolt will curl out of the ground taking part of me into the clouds, leaving my body a smoking husk. The details are never spared; I can smell my burning flesh, the funeral going wrong, being put in the ground etc
Since I have never been to a graveyard to see a loved one, except for the burial of my Pop Pop when I was very young, the graveyard is never a resting place for anyone other than myself. I've been to many graveyards while geocaching or seancing with high schoolers, but never can imagine the real bones under the ground.
I don't want to be those bones. I want to be launched into space on a trajectory that intersects a planet that may carry life, in the dust of my corpse, or my preserved bones, I will hold a message of hope that there is life outside their small rock - a golden tome, a copy of Ender's Game, a grunge album.
If this is not possible, there is always an art display, like Bodies where liquid plastic is pumped through the veins of the deceased as they are posed for public viewing.
The goal: to get rid of my body as soon as possible, without burning. Do not put me in an oven. In an oven I ash, as we all will, but much to fast without the joy of feeding. Instead leave me in a field somewhere wet with many large predators in the middle of a bad hunting season. I want to be torn apart and digested and shit onto the earth to feed flowers and carry insects. I want to be in so many places at once that you can never find where I am, and conversely where I'm not. I want to carry life to something else as a final gift, all i have to give.
If this is not validated, not enough, and you must put me underground with a stone above my head, let me be buried in an empty hole, no casket and no clothing, nothing between me and the earth.
If this is not possible, let me have the thickest hardwood, protection from termites, in a sarcophagus filled with honey to naturally embalm my young flesh. In a pair of jeans. And a flannel shirt. With golden dollars over my eyes, a torah, a traditional ocarina, peyote... I want all my bases covered.
I knew when I was 16 that I would die at 19, just as I now know I will die at 25. When the day does come, I hope I have that moment to see death in front of me, especially if it is only a very brief moment. I don't want her knocking at my door saying she'll be back in 5 years. I want death to burst into the living room and grab me by the clavicles, "3 seconds, and NO MORE!" I have repeated what I would say to myself in those 3 seconds so many times, thoughts without words and feelings stopped in time and a few memories for sure but mostly faces in peachy full color watching in amazement as the electricity crawls in milliseconds from 670 feet underground to the wet spot and the bare foot, through my tendons and out the forehead with no time for crying out or thinking - Oh God. I know I'm not the only one. Let there be one person to witness my last motions, gravity taking its course and pulling me in to say "I saw him fall and it was beautiful and I saw it." Let it happen before I bury my friends and family, Let it happen on a Tuesday because I think that would be a good day to die on. May I know the sound my body makes on its own in those moments and taste my blood, you only die once and I want to feel it.
Don't despair, this day will never come. I will live forever and never hurt or ache and this has all been a silly day dream.
The following colors are not real: Forest green, Midnight Brown, Crimson
The following colors are real: Daylight purple, Sweat blue, Never Gold
and finally...
15 years ago
4 comments:
"Hoka Hey!"
Trans.: "Today is a good day to die!"
-Lakota war cry
"I am a Fox.
I am supposed to die.
If there is anything difficult,
If there is anything dangerous,
That is mine to do."
-Lakota warrior song
I want to be listening to the most epic fucking guitar solo in the universe when I die. I've toyed with the idea of stipulating the following in my own will: that my body be planted under or otherwise be made to fertilize a new crop of marijuana, so that my DNA might influence the DNA of the plant, which my loved ones could then smoke.
Also, I think it's interesting you personified death as a woman.
Today is a good day to die, for sure.
I like listening to a guitar solo in the moment of passing. When i've had psychedelic experiences I like to pick not just the song, but the moment in the song to "come up" on. It's very important to get the timing right, being in that moment when you feel this specific thing. Tripping is a lot like dying.
I started the Carlos Kasteneda book, ps. So far its fantastic, thanks Loren :)
I've always wanted to die in a way that is so funny that people will (in)appropriately laugh at the story. I feel like only this would do justice to my life.
I would also like to be launched into space or used to fertilize a plant that people can enjoy (I was thinking more a tree).
PS I really liked this post. The writing is superb!
I think what we're all saying is that Death is an Art, like life should be.
Don Juan:
"The thing to do when you’re impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you."
"A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions. He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices. He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations. He decisions are final, simply because death does not permit him time to cling to anything. . . . The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency."
"In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is not time for regrets and doubts. There is only time for decisions."
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