apostrophenow

... and now, people. I will attempt to demystify the 'near-death experience'.

An old geezer once sang the words "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke". If I'd never heard of the internet, I would sincerely doubt this notion. But, I'm getting ahead of myself; let me begin by telling you a little story about how I once came to hate one of the things I loved most...

At 21, I was pathetic. Perhaps, in reading this, your reflex was to roll your eyes. Go ahead. It is uncommon knowledge that young people are stupid. I don't make the rules, that's just the way it is. And if you want to fight about it, just think about this first: young people don't rule the world...
and they never will.

I burned through a series of shitty jobs, my main priorities in life were avoiding responsibility and evading the cops. I excelled at one and failed repeatedly at the latter. My path led me to work at a place called "LJ's" which specialized in the lunchtime "pizza buffet". It was a glutton's paradise.
I bussed tables and washed dishes. It didn't take long for me to become disgusted with both pizza and the happily bloated masses who enjoyed pizza. The irony here, was that I had ready access to all the pizza my greedy heart could ever desire. This was Hell.

I don't recall how long I stayed at LJ's, but it was long enough to hate LJ for ruining my life. I couldn't look at a pizza again for about the next two years. How selfish are human beings in general?
Don't answer that, because I think I just did.

Fast forward eleven years... I had become a professional. I had seven years experience in the dental lab business. I built teeth. I was a workaholic. Nothing much had changed about my outlook on life. Pussy was like some kind of mythical magical unicorn of the mind. I got high every day, and by this time several Cops in the vicinity knew my name. I took to riding the bus incognito rather than driving, so as to avoid getting hassled. I was a walking felony.

Let me make it clear that I was so miserable at this point in my life that I contemplated going postal.

I hated teeth. I hated my boss. I hated the rigmarole of having to score drugs to get high to get me through the tedium of the day. I certainly hated the Cops (and still do). Mostly, I hated myself.
I had developed a hostility toward life itself. And then, an interesting thing happened.

I began to die. Slowly. It took about five months to figure it out. I had Cancer. They say bad dreams foreshadow illness. This is true. They say the dying become sensitive to the presence of ghosts and attract the meddling of supernatural entities... would you believe me if I said this were true as well? You don't have to take my word for it, you'll find out for yourself some day.

I cannot demystify dying. It only becomes experience if you live to tell about it.

Upon learning that one has Cancer, some people go into a spiral, never to recover. This did not happen to me. I welcomed the time off from work. I whiled away endless hours in a chemo lounge. People I barely knew came to my home and gave me weed for free. A friend talked me into letting him build a PC for me and I discovered the wonders of being online. It was a sort of vacation from the real world.

Eventually, I had to have a bone marrow transplant. Suffice to say I was humbled.

In the Hindu tradition, Krishna displays his "universal form", an epiphany of a being facing every way and emitting the radiance of a thousand suns, containing all other beings and material in existence. Upon seeing this, Arjuna, the great hero of Hindu legend is overcome by compassion. However, according to legend, he goes on to fight members of his own family in a war because Krishna convinces him that to abstain from action would cause the cosmos to fall out of order. Where am I going with this? ...

It's clich, but I never felt more excited to be alive than when I was dying. My brush with Cancer wasn't the first time I felt this way and it wouldn't be my last. Some people come back claiming to have seen a tunnel with a light at the end. Some people come back claiming to have seen the 'other side'. Some people do the out-of-body thing and see themselves. The last time I was close to death I looked into starless space.

Every time I come back, I feel like life is important and beautiful. And every consecutive day that follows, the importance becomes diminished. Beauty becomes the ordinary. It is thus, until I'm back at the level that seems to be the default attitude, life is a joke. The Void is the Godhead, and you project what you want to see onto it. If standing in line, listening to the braying of the idiots ahead of you is what you were meant to do, you have no real alternative.

I have grown sick of the pretentiousness of this place. I don't trust anyone who espouses to be "punk". Tattoos do nothing for me. Naked women cannot make me smile; I have come to find clothed women, with their myriad styles and good taste, infinitely more intriguing. I never knew what the word "snarky" meant before I came here, and now I hate everyone who uses that word (fuck you guys!). This place has become LJ's.

Anyone who tells you life is overrated hasn't lived.

Anyone who tells you death is overrated deserves whatever's coming to them.