Cheerful Philosophical Musings On Death

I want to talk a little bit about death. This is apparently a touchy subject for people, so if it is for you, you may want to not keep reading.

Everybody is going to die. I'm going to die, you're going to die, my best friends are going to die, your relatives are going to die (if they aren't dead yet), everyone is going to die. Everyone. This isn't meant to be a mean statement, and to my thinking it really, truly isn't mean. It also isn't meant as some sort of threat or menace. It's just truth. Everyone dies.
In my dealings with (most) other people in the past decade I've noticed that they tend to get a little... antsy? jittery? anxious? upset? when this fact of life is mentioned. People apparently are scared of death, and because of that they will do lots of things to make that fear go away. One of the things they do is try to forget that death happens.

Early in my undergrad. years, I read a set of stories in Spanish class.

The first was the story of a youngish (we'll say 30s?) man who was a servant. One day he went into the market to get his master food or something, when he ran into Death. When he saw Death he was shaken up, because in most cultures (and I assume the one the story is told in), usually people only see Death when they are going to die soon. And then, something that terrified him even more was that Death seemed to grimace extra when he saw the man. Clearly, the man was on Death's shitlist. So the man ran back to his master's place and begged for the week off and the fastest horse or donkey around, 'cause he really really needed to visit his sister in far off Gargleblat (can you tell I'm not good at details?). The master agreed to the time off and the donkey on the condition that the man told him why he needed it so bad. The man said that he'd just seen Death in town and he was hoping to outrun/confuse Death by going to Gargleblat.
Of course the master then decides to go to the marketplace to see Death and find out what the whole deal is about. When he gets there, he asks Death why he grimaced upon seeing the servant. Death explains that he was just surprised was all, as far as he knew, he thought that tonight they had an appointment in Gargleblat, and it was weird to see the guy in Plonkville.

The second story in the set was written as a response to the first, and honestly I don't remember it nearly as well because it didn't really resonate the same way for me. In the story the man has reached Gargleblat and realizes that Death is still after him. He goes around town looking for someone to help him outwit Death, but as soon as anyone hears that tonight's his night they shutter the windows and kick him out, until he finds a guy who tells him that he'll help him. The man tells him that so long as he can survive till the morning, then Death won't be able to ever take him. Then they somehow beat Death with mirrors.

The first story treated fear of death as silly and misplaced. It framed death as an appointment, and Death not as a bad chap, just a guy with a job. The second story treated death as something to be avoided at all costs. Never dying was a reward for successfully besting Death. Death became an adversary. Lastly, it was unrealistic, since everyone dies (we'll put aside the manifestation of a fact of life) and at the end of it, the man is made immortal.

Everyone in my class liked the second story better than the first. Everyone, but me and the teacher. I thought the first story was funny. I liked that it looked at life head on. I liked that it admitted that death is going to happen.
Everyone in the class said I was morbid.



This past week I learned that my grandmother's situation is deteriorating. When she got her prognosis 6ish months ago, they basically told her that 6 months was on the outside of how long she'd have to live. So, it's not really a shock that this is happening now. However, one thing she's been firm on for a while is that she and my grandfather are not to talk about the possibility of her dying. She won't talk about it with anyone. Which means that she didn't get around to setting up the necessary steps for her to get hospice care in the home, should she fall into a coma (nor has anyone else in a position to do so). No one knows what to do, because if we all go see her right now on the likelihood that she won't be around in a month, or if we start putting pressure on her to get all the hospice/end of life care stuff worked out, then she'll feel pissed about us forcing her mortality on her

For context, you should also know that my grandfather's first wife (my mother's mother, who died when I was 2) steadfastly continued to insist that she was getting better and that the Goddess (or the Universe, or whatever) would heal her, right up until her death. Some of her daughters' last conversations with her were fights. So...

I'm conflicted, because on the one hand I definitely feel like everyone has a right to self-determination. If you want to shut your eyes and bury your head in the sand about your impending death, fine, do it. But it does harm people around you when you do it, and frankly I just don't understand it. I told my cousin this recently and he said he really sympathized with our grandmother. Which, again, I just don't get.

Then he said "not everyone is like you, most of us are afraid of death."

And I realized! Being depressed and wanting to be dead for all of my adolescent and adult life has given me the gift of less fear! I feel like a superhero: "Depresso Guy"!
Well honestly, if I was dying of cancer, maybe I wouldn't feel as nonchalant as I do about it right now. Admittedly, many things that seems cool in the abstract are fucking terrifying in the real. Like snowboarding. Tried it once, loved going fast, probably looked really awesome and such, until I realized I had no idea how to stop and started worrying about killing a child (ETA: *by going too fast and hitting hir*) when I got to the bottom. So I purposefully took a dive in the trees, pulled some muscles, decided that snowboarding wasn't for me, and anyway it was classist and exclusionary. (Sorry, off topic).
The point is, maybe I'm just deluding myself into thinking that I don't find death terrifying. Maybe I do, and in the long tradition of people who are scared of something and therefore convince themselves that they aren't scared, I say I'm not.

But I've got to say, the idea that maybe for once my Depression has given me something useful, namely the ability to not find my own death so terrifying that I shut down in the face of it, that's sort of cool.

Anyway, I hope your life, however long it is, is one which you generally enjoy.

Apologies

I've been feeling sort of guilty because my resurgence of blog activity is so me, me, me focused. Which is silly, because who else would write this blog if not me? (If I were cool, right now I'd introduce a new guest blogger/co-blogger, but I'm not, so.... life sucks and then everyone dies, eh?)

I guess I mean that recently most of my blogged about thoughts have been about straightness and queerness, transness and cisness, and well, that's about it. But actually I've been spending a whole lot of time thinking about able-ist crap (Amanda Palmer's new project comes to mind, as do the awesome writings of FWD/Forward), and some racism stuff (I have thoughts about why Tiger Wood's whatever has become such a big fucking deal, and guess what, they relate to him being a person of color), and then of course there are other thoughts, like my incessant nagging depression, and the fact that the house needs to get cleaned, and what's going on with the dog, and how the hell do I expect myself to be a good social worker/foster parent/force for social justice/insert positive thing here, when I'm plagued with a constant hatred of myself and the idea that I'm basically a pretty worthless person who might be better off if I were, say, non-existent (oh hey, I just repeated myself, this is my depression in a nutshell!), and what to make for dinner.

I'm also spending a good chunk of my time thinking about all the things I want to do once I get my (apparently magical?) Masters in Social Work, like: set up a kitchen where people who are homeless/temporarily homeless can cook their own food free of charge and eat a meal without it being this big deal (because generally food that is easy to eat standing up/while moving/without a stove or even a microwave isn't all that healthy/nutritious, and while some people who can prove they are homeless can get "special" food stamps benefits letting them buy premade warm mac & cheese or mashed potatoes, lots of people can't and therefore can only buy needing-to-be-boiled pasta, even though they don't have a stove/running water), or set up a "pro-bono" type of thing where licensed therapy type people go into jails where mentally ill criminals are basically just stored, and give them real honest to goodness therapy to help them, and having a really good home-based therapy program especially for people suffering from PTSD and those who are dealing with sexual assualt/rape, (because hey, I know I won't be a victim blamey jackass, unlike apparently the vast majority of other therapists in the world), and how about a really actually non-judgmental drop in place for pregnant people who may not have intended to be pregnant where we'll give totally even-handed information about adoption and abortion and keeping a child, (and regardless of what you choose we'll help you do it, including months of therapy after whatever decision you make comes to fruition, and if you want to give a child up for adoption we'd also help you find prospective parents and be non-classist and not transphobic and ok with polyamory and such, and if you want to keep the child and funds are a problem we'll work our asses off to find you clothing and services and food and housing and, and if you want an abortion we'll drive you to the place), and yeah, I have a lot of ideas.

I just sort of want to fix the world and be perfect. Which, I've been told is not possible, and hoping/expecting that from myself may in fact be a problem.

So, I guess this is a "sorry" for not writing enough about racism and able-ism.

And even though I know you think is silly: sorry for not being perfect and fixing the world.

Not Perfect: More Tim Minchin

I've been listening to/searching out Tim's stuff now since Tuesday, and so far I've found multiple things I really like, and nothing that I dislike. And here's the problem: all the good stuff, it's really really good. So good that I would like to learn to play it/sing it. (I guess that isn't a problem). But (here comes the problem), I can't. I mean, I'm not a 31 year old married Australian. Other awesome artists with moving love songs and the like have the decency to make it either really specfiic, but clearly as "story", or super universal. Not Tim, oh no, Tim wants to make it all about him, him, him. Selfish bastard, I want to make it all about ME, ME, ME. But now I can't. So you'll just have to listen to "Not Perfect" by Tim Minchin as played by him instead of as played by me because he's a selfish jerk.

[Tim Minchin, sitting at piano speaking into mic]: This feeling, you know that feeling you get when you feel like you’re the smallest [gestures to self] doll in a babushka doll?
[Audience Laughs, Tim Minchin gives meaningful look]
This is a song about that.
[Starts playing piano chording slowly]
[Singing]: This is my Earth and I live in it.
It’s one third dirt and two thirds water.
And it rotates and revolves through space, at rather an impressive pace, and never even messes up my hair. [Some audience giggles]
[Tim look as though he just thought of something] And here’s the really weird thing: the force created by its spin is the force that stops the chaos flooding in.

This is my Earth, and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect.

This is my country, and I live in it.
It’s pretty big and nice to walk on.
And the bloke who runs my country has built a demagoguery and taught us to be fearful and [sung with derision] boring. [Applause]
And the weirdest thing is that he is conservative of politics, but really rather radical of eyebrow. [Laughter and applause]

This is my country and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect.

This is my house and I live in it.
It’s made of cracks and photographs.
We rent it off a guy who bought it from a guy, who bought it from a guy, [audience laughter] whose granddad left it to him.
[Tim looks like he’s mentally searching for lyrics] And the weirdest thing is that this house has locks to keep the baddies out but they’re mostly used to lock ourselves in.

This is my house and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect but it's mine.

This is my body and I live in it.
It’s 31 and 6 months old.
It’s changed a lot since it was new, it’s done stuff it wasn’t built to do [audience laughter]: I often try to fill it up with wine. [audience laughter]
And the weirdest thing about it is: I spend so much time hating it but it never says a bad word about me.

This is my body and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect.

This is my brain [audience laughter][Tim sings high pitched] and I live in it.
It’s made of love and bad song lyrics [ashamedly sung]. [audience laughter]
It’s tucked away behind my eyes where all my fucked up thoughts can hide, ‘cos God forbid I hurt somebody.
And the weirdest thing about a mind: is that every answer that you find is the basis of a brand new cliché. [audience chuckles]

This is my brain and it’s fine.
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
It’s not perfect, I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to work it.
It’s not perfect but it’s mine.
[close up on Tim playing outro]
[Applause]
[Spoken]: Thank you.
[Bows]

as always, as complete a transcript as I can make

There are just so many things to love about this song:
Every time I hear him sing about the "force created by the spin" of earth, it makes me wonder yet again at how crazily lucky it is that life even exists, let alone you and me*.
When he sings about Australia, you can tell that he really cares about his country and wants to see it get better, and seeing that reflected in his lyrics about the "locks to keep the baddies out" that are "mostly used to lock ourselves in" is just wonderful as well.
I think anyone who's grown up in our body-shaming culture can relate to the body verse, and at least for this person with depression: I really felt connected with the pressing need to try to protect people from myself.



Hmmm, maybe with a good U.S. related re-write of the country bit I could perform this myself. It might just be worth it.


*which has been helped along considerably by the fact that I am currently reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins wherein he talks briefly about all the exact little things that went into creating this planet that is suitable for carbon based life, of which there are a considerable number, (and that doesn't mean I think this was "designed" for us. As, uh, (thanks yingyang)someone whose name I can't remember Douglas Adams said, that'd be like a puddle looking at it's place in the world and saying "wow, I sure fit in this here puddle quite nicely, it must mean that it was MADE for me", which I think we can all get the humor of quite well without an explanation of).

Nevermind what my life is actually like: In which I admit frustration with life

Last week one of the resident/patrons at my work decided to tell me that my life is easy.

Nevermind what my life is actually like.

Nevermind that he doesn't know a thing about my life outside of the fact that I run the computer lab.

He had decided (apparently) that I am young and therefore live at my parents' house. He had decided (apparently) that living at my parents would definitely be the easiest and most fun thing I could possibly do as (apparently) a twentyone year old (news to me that I'm 21!). He had decided (apparently) that my entire income isn't put towards rent and food and replacing wallets that are so old they are literally disintegrating and not much else. (PS, I got a new wallet today! Yay! I hope that my foodstamps will cover the caviar I'm planning for the occasion! /snark) He had decided (apparently) that since I am a young person I have perfect mobility (regardless of whether that's true or not). He had decided (apparently) that my biggest problem in life must be what to spends all the loads of cash I make from working in the computer lab.

Nevermind that I have depression which two weeks ago led to me honestly consider stabbing myself through the arm with a kitchen knife and did lead to me trying to strangle myself with an electrical cord. Nevermind that HUGE numbers of people my age face similar depression, and that we are told to ignore it and hope it'll go away, or that by talking about it we are thought to be attention grabbing.


The only thing I can imagine is that his life as a 20something white straight male in the '80s was apparently peachy keen. Good for him.

He apparently thinks that his experience as a twentysomething is universal. I guess being a white straight male in the '80s is pretty universal. Other than the part where he was a white straight male in the '80s as a twenty year old.
You know what? If you were a white straight male in the '80s, maybe it was. I don't know. Oh, other than that it totally wasn't. That there are hundreds of little aspects of who we are that intersect to make up our life experiences. Telling someone who you don't know that their life is so easy is the height of condescension.

There's a clear strain of ageism that runs through all this (and with many of my interactions with the older patrons). As though I couldn't see myself how life could be stressfull with a mortgage (not that he has one, he lives in a managed apartment building with rent, not mortgages, so far as I can figure). But apparently as a 40something guy, he magically does indeed know about mortgages. Oh and relationships. And everything there is to know about roommates. And definitely about being on government assistance.

I wonder does he know anything about heterosexism and homophobia? Does he know anything about struggling to keep existing in a world that tells him that almost his entire identity as a person is an abomination?

Maybe. I wouldn't presume to tell him what his life was like. Hah.




PS. While I wasn't intending to whine, I refuse to apologize that I did. If you don't like it, you can just bump it on down the road.