what makes this so difficult? i mean, i've always wandered cemeteries and read the notes on tombstones: in life she was anything but an angel, now she has a chance. hey, i could written that about myself. better to be witty than too serious about the whole subject. after all, the world won't exist once i'm gone. poof, vanished, lost in space. as my friend randy said before he died, 'when i retired, i thought the forest service couldn't go on without me. in the fall i visited the office and i overheard some kid ask, "who's that old dude?"'
somehow i care what people might say, all the conversations in the world 90% gossip. yet i don't expect to be mentioned at the water cooler all that often, though i'd like the lazy bums to use one of my aphorisms now and then, even if they don't know where it came from. the mother creates the poet (and kills him). i could talk about that for awhile. she puffs him up and then he explodes with drink or an overdose, leaving a trail of lovely lines behind. shall i compare thee to a summer's day? poor guy, they were lying on the beach as she watched the oiled and muscular guy play volleyball.
i could go to the other extreme. in airplanes he always assumed he'd be the lone survivor. of course, being the last human being on the planet can't be much fun. imagine adam before eve, bent sadly over his grape juice and petting a cougar. god realized his creation needed lots of trouble to wake him up. yes, the sexes enliven each other. and when they discover what sex leads to, the murder of abel by caine, it's too late and they have to deal with the divorce. no wonder 41% of babies born in america today to single woman. they've realized though they might miss a bit of alimony the guy will probably be a dead-beat.
born into a world of war, he tried to be at peace with himself. unfortunately, that one doesn't apply to me. in my philosophy you have to suffer if you want to be like other people and relate to their lives. sitting for years under the bo tree like the buddha good for some people. i'd rather ride a bus through the costa rican jungle, even if the road be bumpy. alas, self-deception the reason we have so many conversations with ourselves, to find agreement on just about every prejudice we have. yes, we're not alone. and i'm not getting any closer to the objective, an unvarnished statement of the truth.
hmm, the only thing i can say for sure, 'he encouraged other people to be independent. no wonder he passed away in solitude.'
here's evidence of his obsession with funerary monuments. he always read the dates to see how long the permanently reclining had lived:
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/marble
http://www.pbase.com/wwp/marble2
