Today was my day! And I blew it! It’s not too late, right? Last night I had one of those “if we’ve only got a couple of hours to sleep, let’s make it count” dreams. I don’t know if I can fully explain it because it was so awful I woke up crying and couldn’t [...]
Archive for the ‘Death’ category
When I Change My Life
“When I Change My Life” — The Pretenders Probably the most brilliant idea I ever had was the discovery that I could run away. When I was a miserable little kid, I fantasized about death because I couldn’t imagine my way out of my situation. I was eight, and I told people what I needed, [...]
Censorship is a Funny Thing
In the past few weeks, my roommate and I have watched a couple of movies that got their directors banned from making films in their home countries. We didn’t set out to do it; it’s just what we like, I guess. It seems a bit extreme to me, not just to ban the film itself, [...]
After we die
Funerals are in the air today, what with the memorial in Tucson for the victims of that shooting. I recently attended a funeral. The person who died was a very lovely man. He lived to be 78. He was still too young to die as his mind and body were relatively agile until the last [...]
Mama’s come to jesus
I was waiting in line at Walmart. I had one tube of my favorite Garnier curl sculpting cream gel on sale for $2.00 off. Three families with full shopping carts were ahead of me. They must have been buying their entire Christmas: heaps of toys, clothes, electronics, kids running around, women digging in cavernous satchels [...]
Death may have no mercy, but it frequently offers some fascinating stories
I’m a big fan of the obituaries page in the Sunday paper. It may seem a little morbid, but I love the mini-biographies and micro-histories of the semi-famous and somewhat influential that can be found there. Reading an interesting, well-written obituary is among the most entertaining ways to learn a sliver of knowledge about a [...]
Zombies
Overheard in the Bar at Chili’s: A: Did you see that movie, “Zombieland”? B: No. A: It’s really funny. B: I hate Zombies. A: Why? B: You can’t kill them. They just keep coming. They can’t die because they are already dead. A: You can cut off their heads or blow them up. C: Or [...]
The future
The future has been postponed So now you can all go home There’s nothing left to see here There’s no one to save you There’s no reason to be here There’s no one to talk to The lights came down by themselves The cars all were parked by themselves The people all stood still And [...]
The ossuary at Kutna Hora
They say there are the remains of forty thousand bodies inside the area of about a thousand square feet.
Advance grief
This week The New Yorker (issue dated September 13, 2010) published extracts from Roland Barthes’ diary after the death of his mother. These brilliant meditations on grief struck a deep chord. My (coincidentally French) cat has entered the final stage of her life. She likely has a tumor in her bladder and is nearly 20 [...]
