On Death.
This morning, after deciding to not let my sore limbs and very stiff neck keep me from my daily simple pleasures, I hopped on Beth* and made my way over to Starbuck's to have a couple smokes, drink some tea and watch the clouds (I'm a total sucker for this kind of thing.) Sitting in those wonderfully comfortable faux-wicker chairs in jeans and a beater, enjoying the calm breeze and being thankful for the lack of high school kids which usually inhabit Buck's around this time (I'm a man who likes his solitude,) all is well. As I reflect lightly on the sort of hippy-soul shit most folks save for when they're toasted, the wind picks up. And up. And up.
Now, those big ass umbrellas they have out on the patios tend to be pretty well grounded by their bases, which are heavy as fuck. But today, the wind definitely had Wheaties for breakfast and was coming on strong like the first girl I was ever remotely intimate with. So strong, in fact that it whips the umbrellas right out of their bases and sends them flying into the parking lot, one into a car about ten feet away from where I'm quietly posted up, the other call it three inches from my head (probably further, but whatever.) The wind also knocked over all the tables and uninhabited chairs, sending them into the parking lot and messily casting my tea (sweetened green, with class. Because I have none,) onto the sidewalk, along with whatever other useless shit was on my table. Still calm, because my adrenal glands only wake up for mountain biking and sex, apparently, I note the large hole in the body of one of the cars, and it occurs to me that the other umbrella could very well have made a pulpy canoe out of my head. This thought is not particularly frightening to me, given a general non-attachment to my own existence and a spiritual acceptance of the concept of death, but my mind dwells on this thought:
Bludgeoned to death by a giant umbrella is absolutely NOT what I want written in the coroner's annotations as my cause of death. (Unless I were the coroner, because it sounds fucking awesome when I say it.)
Fuck being remembered for what you did in life! You could be the nicest, most magnanimous fellow to walk the earth, or the most evil and sick son of bitch to ever crawl out of a womb, but if you die in some mundane, non-noteworthy way, I don't want to know who you are, much less go to your goofy ass funeral. Die big! Make a goddamn mess! If your death didn't require a cleaning crew, what the fuck were you doing dying in the first place?! I could live with something like crashing my bike into something explosive which sets the nearby medical marijuana dispensary ablaze the day some beastly, otherworldly purple strain of the stuff got shipped in and there's a complete fallout of THC for miles and miles around. That would be fucking awesome, and people would LAUGH and SMILE about my death instead of becoming a bunch of somber assholes that no one wants to hang out with because they're being a total downer about the inevitable.
Think big!
That said, if there was any merit to my I'm-tripping-on-shrooms declaration that "I am immortal, and so can you," I won't have to worry about any of this.
*Beth is my bike's name, because I love the play MacBeth, and because the name Beth is one of those few awkward and outdated women's names that didn't deserve to become awkward and outdated.
This morning, after deciding to not let my sore limbs and very stiff neck keep me from my daily simple pleasures, I hopped on Beth* and made my way over to Starbuck's to have a couple smokes, drink some tea and watch the clouds (I'm a total sucker for this kind of thing.) Sitting in those wonderfully comfortable faux-wicker chairs in jeans and a beater, enjoying the calm breeze and being thankful for the lack of high school kids which usually inhabit Buck's around this time (I'm a man who likes his solitude,) all is well. As I reflect lightly on the sort of hippy-soul shit most folks save for when they're toasted, the wind picks up. And up. And up.
Now, those big ass umbrellas they have out on the patios tend to be pretty well grounded by their bases, which are heavy as fuck. But today, the wind definitely had Wheaties for breakfast and was coming on strong like the first girl I was ever remotely intimate with. So strong, in fact that it whips the umbrellas right out of their bases and sends them flying into the parking lot, one into a car about ten feet away from where I'm quietly posted up, the other call it three inches from my head (probably further, but whatever.) The wind also knocked over all the tables and uninhabited chairs, sending them into the parking lot and messily casting my tea (sweetened green, with class. Because I have none,) onto the sidewalk, along with whatever other useless shit was on my table. Still calm, because my adrenal glands only wake up for mountain biking and sex, apparently, I note the large hole in the body of one of the cars, and it occurs to me that the other umbrella could very well have made a pulpy canoe out of my head. This thought is not particularly frightening to me, given a general non-attachment to my own existence and a spiritual acceptance of the concept of death, but my mind dwells on this thought:
Bludgeoned to death by a giant umbrella is absolutely NOT what I want written in the coroner's annotations as my cause of death. (Unless I were the coroner, because it sounds fucking awesome when I say it.)
Fuck being remembered for what you did in life! You could be the nicest, most magnanimous fellow to walk the earth, or the most evil and sick son of bitch to ever crawl out of a womb, but if you die in some mundane, non-noteworthy way, I don't want to know who you are, much less go to your goofy ass funeral. Die big! Make a goddamn mess! If your death didn't require a cleaning crew, what the fuck were you doing dying in the first place?! I could live with something like crashing my bike into something explosive which sets the nearby medical marijuana dispensary ablaze the day some beastly, otherworldly purple strain of the stuff got shipped in and there's a complete fallout of THC for miles and miles around. That would be fucking awesome, and people would LAUGH and SMILE about my death instead of becoming a bunch of somber assholes that no one wants to hang out with because they're being a total downer about the inevitable.
Think big!
That said, if there was any merit to my I'm-tripping-on-shrooms declaration that "I am immortal, and so can you," I won't have to worry about any of this.
*Beth is my bike's name, because I love the play MacBeth, and because the name Beth is one of those few awkward and outdated women's names that didn't deserve to become awkward and outdated.