Today's Fish Selection, Carpe Diem

Sitting here tonight - it is 11:19 pm (the way we've learned to tell time digitally, instead of ghe more casual "almost 11:30) or "past bedtime" or "getting toward midnight," and you probably know I've been faithful to a bedtime routine that includes getting off screens at 9 pm, okay, sometimes pushing it a bit.  I've done a lot of things those who style themselves experts in sleep call "sleep hygiene."  (The very term makes you not want to do it.)

Because over and over I keep learning it doesn't pay to be good.  I mean, to be obedient, to let someone else tell you what is good for you.  I've had two nights running now where I did all that shit the way I was supposed to and still couldn't get to sleep until 2 pm.  And then only because it occurred to me to take another 6 mg of melatonin.  Jesus.

But I've had a good day here in spite of that, or maybe because I was just too stressed from it to behave.  Started right off with a nervous breakthrough, that's where I get really upset at someone and have to practice right speech like crazy and take some ativan.  These things usually happen when I've been too f---- patient, too nice, put up with crap until it nudged me over the line.  It's always a good thing in terms of clearing my mind.

I got closer to some women friends today as a result.  Made it to church, but not to the worship center.  Just sat in Fellowship Hall and talked to people, starting with, thank God, Barb.  I told her how I can predict tomorrow to be a bad day, and just knew I wouldn't get in the car at 3:00 (my low point of the day, except I get worse until about 6:00 on a bad day) and go to Art Journaling which is now a semi-private group of very nice women who are interested in each other's art-making and old enough to be cool.  Women you can talk to. I love the intimacy of making art with friends.

So Barb said she is going to be babysitting Christopher tomorrow, and how about they come and pick me up and take me to art?  Now - that is a bodhissatva at work.  Barb happens to be a UU Christian, I'd say, and I am rather that too, but primarily Buddhist.  Who cares?  Kindness is the basis of all true religion.  No doctrinal arguments there.

It's been a hellish week for me, still alternating days good/bad like f------ clockwork, and my depressed days really black, maybe because of learning about Scott's death Sunday, on a bad day, and then the funeral last Thursday, another bad day, and I never should have gone.  I quit.  I am not going to anymore of these goddam "Memorial Services" unless I feel good.  I personally hate the way my church does funerals, where everybody talks about celebrating someone's life - yeah, celebrating.  Scott was 49 years old and died of a massive heart attack.  What is there to celebrate about that?

Nobody ever breaks down sobbing helplessly at these things, it's like that's everyone's goal, not to cry.  Actually, that's been true of every f--- funeral I've ever been to except Sarah's last fall.  Sarah's, we cried, her sister sobbed, a minister spoke briefly of death and loss.  But the ones at our church . . .

It has never worked for me.  I can't drink now, with my meds, but what I'd really like is to go to a good Irish funeral as I imagine them, I don't care what the religion is, as long as people wear black and weep.  And then everyone should sit down to a lot of good substantial food and get drunk and kiss people in the hall and hug each other and tell people sloppily you love them.  That's what you should figure out from being around death:  get into life.  Get with it.  Live it.  This is no time to be civilized.

Alright.  I'm going to break one of my own sensible rules and post this tonight.  I hope you like the cat pictures.  And by the way, I love you guys who read this.  Sometimes I feel so tired and lonely in the middle of the night, and it's consoling when I see someone on the other side of the world is reading this blog that very moment.  I love that.  This is my little bit of string.

How to Perform a Funeral

Resurrection lily

I opened this blog this morning because I had something to say that was urgent enough to interrupt my preparations for a shower. It was this: I've been to four funerals in the past two months, and I've seen more than one pattern.  One of them is that people collude to talk about what an ornery prankster cute person someone was.  And I didn't recognize that person at all.  It seems to be about not wanting to tell the truth about someone who was hard to love and unsatisfying.  Maybe not wanting to see that reality.  When there are lots of conflicted feelings, the past gets remodeled.  (But isn't that how people are, anyway?)

I have a sincere request: don't do that to me when I die. I have no idea whether an "I" will be left, and if so, whether I will be around to know what you do, or care.  But I'd just like to think that this wish of mine will be respected. I am a real person. If you can't say something authentic about me, just sit there and say nothing. That will do. Don't invent some lovable eccentric (notice how I am leaving out cuss words here). Don't invent me after I am dead. 

In line with that general idea of acknowledging the real life and death of a person, here is a wonderful poem that I remembered as we drove home yesterday from the funeral for Tom's father.  I read it aloud to Tom and we both felt grounded at last. Williams was a physician, so he got to see plenty of phony covered-up plastic smiles and talk about heaven and love and faith, and weird distortions of the past, enough to make him write this.  There is only one thing I have faith in - I, too, will die.  I don't know when.  I told Tom to begin my own memorial service with this.

                 Tract
                      by William Carlos Williams

I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God—glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the lack of them—
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass—
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom—
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.

No wreathes please—
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes—a few books perhaps—
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople—
something will be found—anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.

For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him—
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down—bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all—damn him!—
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind—as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly—
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What—from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us—it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.