More memories about the fun...

More memories about the funeral. All those people who I haven’t seen in decades, all in that one place: old church people, old neighborhood people, old public-school classmates, extended family and the usual suspects. I felt like I myself was the one who had died, because it was just what the Unwise Ones say will happen when you’re in the heavenly waiting room: All of your acquaintances will pass before you, and your life will play out before your eyen like a movie. ["Eyen = noun, plural eyes (Archaic)..."] Then Jehovah will condemn you to the lake of fire, where you will burn forever and ever; and the saints will watch you suffer.

As I explained a couple entries ago, I broke my laptop. So now I have been shopping for replacements. I hate shopping I hate all the choices. (I love art. I love all the choices.) All I want is a good, sturdy telegraph machine with heavy keys that click when you press them. Nowadays the fad is to buy a laptop-minus-the-keyboard: it has only the screen, which you touch and it responds – that’s called a “tablet” or a “pad” or an I-don’t-know-what. It’s good for playing video games and watching TV series and films, and for storing music. So here’s the problem: I don’t want to play video games; I don’t want to watch TV shows or movies or listen to music. I just want something that will allow the NSA to keep me and guide me. [NSA = National Security Agency.]

During the recent cremation-burial after-party, my aunt told about the system that benefited my grandmother in her last years of life. This was way, way back in the days of the telephone. The people in my grandmother’s neighborhood lived far apart, because they all possessed acres of farmland; so it was inconvenient for them to walk physically from house to house to check on everyone’s well-being. So they formed a call-chain: Every morning at a certain time, one person would call the next on the list, and that person would call the next, etc. Here I should admit that I don’t really understand all the details of how this worked; but the point is that, one morning, my grandmother didn’t answer – so they knew that something must be wrong. Sure enough, it turned out that she neglected to respond to the ring of the telephone as she had been experiencing the effects of heart failure. It is my understanding that this phone-line safety measure resulted in my grandma living a longer life than she otherwise would have.

But I say the following on behalf of none but myself; I'm only being honest: my words do not reflect the views of any corporation or well-loved family member. Even if heart failure makes me engage in an activity that I would rather not experience, such as vomiting or other forms of incontinence, I wonder if I would truly prefer getting rescued. Because one must die some hour. And, if not now, when...?

When people meet my sweetheart and learn that she is a music teacher, they perk up and ask what instruments she teaches; then they ask how many students she has. Then they look at me and ask if I play any instruments. And I always stammer and admit that I am attracted to modern synthesizers and sampling devices: I explain that I like the strange new noisy collaged rhythms of old rap music from around the 1980s, because, even now, it feels futuristic to me…

But I don’t play the violin or piano. But I admire anyone who plays any acoustic, orchestral instrument.

I also like the writings of Samuel Beckett: I prefer that type of wondering/wandering, searching, groping forward to the unknown…

In other words: I dislike where I am and I want to be elsewhere.

P.S.

The present generation is doing generally worse than the previous generation. Is the same decline true for the latest age? I have hope in the millennials. (Definition and quote from an online search: Millennial = a person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century. “The industry brims with theories on what makes millennials tick.”) They seem happier and more relaxed than my compatriots. (Definition and quote from an online search: Bryan’s compatriots = rats. “Weblogger Bryan’s compatriots spread the plague.”)

Each time you lose your memory or break your computing device, you end up having to adapt to a new environment. My dad lost his mind and had to learn to live in a small room in the nursing home with many other people. Had he lived one generation in the future and broken his computing device instead of…

We biked to the park today. It was colder than yesterday. We stopped at a retail store and looked at the electronic “tablets.” A salesperson with hair dyed orange-red asked if we needed help, and we said “No, thanks!” Then another salesperson appeared sixteen seconds later and asked if we needed help, and we said “No” again, and she urged us to check out their brand new “pads”—that is, “if we love Apple products” [Apple = a modern corporation, NOT the forbidden fruit from Genesis 2:16-17]; plus her hair was dyed blonde. I like shopping because people talk to one, whereas, if one were starving in the desert, the very same people would not talk to one: they would steal one's canteen, even if it were empty. No: I’m joking; they would guide one to the mirage of the nearby oasis. People are genuinely you-name-it.

I also got to meet my sister’s “life coach” at the reception at the second blah, blah, blah…

Are you gainfully employed? I am a life coach. You coach people on life? I coach people on how to live, and what to do after death.

Why does everyone hate FDR? I mean, I hate FDR a little bit, but he was not altogether evil. Was he? ["Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President."] I say give him a chance. But also I wish that he had done much more for the people who were outside of his own comfortable class.

Everything seems to be funneling towards class politics again.

I wonder how many times typists have had to type the word “again.” Or writers, scribes… Now that our “smart phones” can transcribe our murmurings…

If Pharaoh had slain Moses as a baby, instead of allowing him to live and become a U.S. citizen…

What if Jesus had been slain as a baby, by Herod. Instead of becoming the…

If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other. Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good: do not all go to one place? [Ecclesiastes 6:3-6]