Dear diary,
I don’t understand why people save up their own money to pay for their…
Ugh, I hate saying “people” and “their”. Let me make up a name so that I can say “Orlok” and “his”.
I don’t understand why Orlok would save up his money to pay for his own burial plot. In other words: If a count is a European nobleman whose rank corresponds to that of an English earl, then why would he put a stipulation in his will to cover the cost of his funeral? It just seems that OTHERS should be required to figure out how to dispose of you, or to display you or whatever, once you’re dead. Cuz it’s their problem not yours. What! are you trying to act honorable? Believe me, no one cares.
When people voluntarily pay for their own post-death arrangements, they’re missing out on a rare opportunity for happiness in this life – therefore I urge you: Skirt the only bill that is safely ignorable.
You say: “But if I don’t cover the costs, they’ll pass to my relatives; & I don’t want to be a burden on my family.” Well, here’s a newsflash: You’re already a burden on your family: all relatives secretly despise all other relatives; that’s the definition of family.
When my own dad died, had his church’s pastor said to me “Bryan, alas, your father did not set aside any money for his funeral service; and his coffin and grave-plot also have yet to be paid for,” I would answer:
“Then leave him wherever he is. Let the crows eat him.”
Then if the pastor said, “But the casket is presently in the chapel, awaiting the funeral.”
“Then open a window,” I’d say. “Crows are smart — they’ll be able to find him.”
“Or alternately,” I’d add, “you could pierce his feet, run a rope thru and fasten the opposite end to your motorcar, then drag his corpse around the parking lot — you know, like Achilles does to Hektor, in the Iliad, after slaying him; except he used a chariot, not a motorcar, because times have devolved.”
*
But I do comprehend the instinct of caring deeply about the world that will succeed you. I even share it: I don’t agree with those folks who proclaim “It matters not what happens after I die — for I won’t even be around to experience anything.” I myself think about the post-Bryan world a lot: it matters to me because I don’t believe that it won’t affect me: I just know that it won’t affect Bryan; and, yes, I am Bryan right now, and Bryan is transient, but the force that imbues all living creatures is infinite; thus, while still Bryan, I want to do whatever is possible with this being, to make the world a better place. Since nothing is not potentially a New Me, let my placeholder cater to everything.
“But” you argue, “there’s no way to improve the world for ALL living creatures, since what makes the world more habitable for one type of thing inevitably makes the world worse for another. Like, the more we improve this world for lions, the worse lambs have it; and as much as we happify horses, we sadden tygers.”
OK, I get this. And I admire that last example — it reminds me of the proverb from my favorite scripture, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” But when I say that I want to try to better the world for future life in whatever way my present life can, if I’m forced to choose between two types of life, then I’ll do my best and favor the more complex consciousness, because I think the human form is diviner than any other earthly fauna: it is closer to breaching the bound of being that life is ever striving to surpass. Since humankind is the most sublime style of creature available to my current purview, I wish to increase the blessing for that form first — thus homo sapiens are my priority; which is also why I contribute to creative literature: I think the most advanced beings’ highest function is poetic genius.
& again, in whatever way seems right, I will aim & refine my efforts to benefit all other living creatures, with a predisposition for those most similar to ourself: for example, I’m told that dolphins & whales & certain cephalopods & Nosferatu & ravens & yetis & housepets & elephants are possibly wiser than mankind; & the only uncertainty regarding this stems from the fact that we humans can’t yet fathom their way of sermonizing. But I give them the benefit of the doubt, and I’ll try to move the world to serve them as well, in case they end up hefting the god-torch into the future after we drop out of the race. I’m trying to say that I want their world to be fun, in case I become them. And if I find myself inhabiting the form of, say, a mosquito or woodtick, I hope that the world is harsh for me — I’d rather know that fate favors the cats, pigs, and dogs (which is what I meant by the term “housepets” above) rather than myself-as-insect, even tho it’ll hurt my then-current form: that’ll be a distinguished sacrifice for me to make, for the advancement of life. And I am at peace with the misfortune I’ll endure, if I find myself inhabiting a parasite: for that existence will be temporary — very brief, I hope — and then I’ll move on to further forms, which are, I pray, complexer and sublimer.
It’s interesting, tho, how the Eternal Life “fixes” upon a given form. How does one end up ONLY Bryan Ray, rather than Bryan and two foxes plus half an otter? (By “half” I mean I’d play its poetic aspect, and, say, some banker somewhere could take care of the creature’s busy-work.) I guess I have a tendency to think of the mysterious force of Life Itself as if it’s a mist or liquid pervading the universe, so it seems funny to have the same substance filling one vessel, and also filling another vessel, but these split blanks, altho sharing one essence and being in a certain sense selfsame, cannot communicate except indirectly (by way of moving each respective creature’s appendages, thus creating a language of signs betwixt the twain; or swishing water over one’s gills to sing praise to one’s alien-self).
I guess I don’t believe that anything’s not alive; in other words, unlike a table-full of silvered glass tumblers filled with vodka, the world of life is more like liquid vodka cupping solid vodka within an air of vodka vapor (no glass, no silver); so, since everything consists of the same sublime substance, why does the substance itself not know as much?
Perhaps the vodka of life enjoys self-love only via self-abandonment, which is made possible with a grant from Separatehood, a subsidiary of the Divider Corporation.
And if individuality is God’s original sin, as Nietzsche implies while addressing the Dionysian dismemberment (“a transformation into air, water, earth, and fire”) when he says “we are therefore to regard the state of individuation as the origin and primal cause of all suffering, as something objectionable in itself”, I say, if this is true, then it answers that age-old question “Why did God invent evil?” — for this means that God permitted evil to exist for the sake of augmenting the Unalterable Oneness: thus, here, “augmenting” is synonymous with “admiring”.
And when you consider all the things that are possible in this world, it’s odd that certain things are truly impossible; or that they must wait their turn to grow humdrum (read: boringly true). Time really is persnickety about doling out chaos.
So the best way to be buried is to find a secluded place in the woods, where no one will find you, & dig a manger-shaped depression with your hands, about the size of your corpse; then lie down in there, and shovel the dirt back until the earth is flat.
Then, back at your house in Minnesota, no one will know where you went; your neighbors will just assume that you’ve given up on lawn-care: you’re just letting your grass grow long; perhaps your push-mower broke, and you don’t have the money to fix it. “He’s probably just reading a book, or working at his writer’s desk in the basement. Weeks can go by without me seeing him; cuz he only comes out at night — I think he’s allergic to the sun; so this behavior is normal.” That’s what my next door neighbor says.
So my point is that, even if you give yourself a proper burial, it’ll take a while for anyone to notice you’re gone. Maybe a water pipe would have to burst in your home, to get someone’s attention: then the Fire Department would knock down your door to save you (but why would firefighters wanna fight water?); yet, when they look around, nobody’s there. Then they leave and forget to close the front door, so the neighbors will enter into your house and begin to snoop around, and they’ll find nothing of interest.
Months pass; and then a policeman, who happens to be driving by in his squad car, notices a couple foxes crawling out the back window of this house; so he stops & bangs his fist on the entrance. Now a neighbor yells from across the street: “His door’s always unlocked.” So the officer enters and calls out: “Anyone home?” But there’s no answer. Finally, after looking around, he checks the bathroom and finds the tub brimming over with vodka, and inside is an otter.
P.S.
Here are two extra lines of dialogue that I didn’t add to the ending, because I didn’t want the thing to get too jokey. But it’s worth noting that I chose not to include these ideas, so that you can understand how ruthlessly I trim my compositions to make them perfect. So I was gonna have the Officer say to the otter that he finds in Bryan’s bathtub, “What are you doing here, all dressed up in Orlok’s bed?” And then the otter would answer (in a distinguished voice), “Is this not heaven?” or alternately she could say “Are we still alive?” and then the title would appear on the screen: Mind in a Vat.
[In case it’s not obvious, I wanna acknowledge that I re-worked elements from my favorite movie Wrong Cops (2013) into the end of this blog post, and changed them considerably in the process.]
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