"What do you think happens when we die?" It's a useless question.  It's like trying to divide a number by zero.  Despite the insistence of any given cult leader, nobody really knows the answer.  Add to that the fact that whatever exists in/as the beyond is likely incomprehensible to the marginally upgraded primate brains we carry around in our skulls.  Still, we can't shrink from the inevitability of death.  It's not just impossible to avoid, it's actually the central mystery of our lives--like a dense, impenetrable hub of the wheel that keeps us in motion, keeps us vital.  

Even our peripheral sense of what death is, or might be, gives our lives a specific shape.  Our terror forces us to devise a causa sui project, or hero project, (I learned this from Ernest Becker) where in essence we say, "Ok, if I can be a good enough parent/artist/teacher/worker/rich enough, etc. etc. then my life will last forever.  I can cheat my own dissolution by making my life so meaningful that I will never be forgotten." Becker explains that human beings are unique in the animal kingdom because they are creative, innovative, self-conscious, and aware of a bigger picture. Ergo, they alone are the unfortunate recipients of a crushing neurosis and suffering that stems from having to reconcile those God-like qualities with the uncomfortable truth that they ultimately end up as food for worms.  (In his discussion of anality, Becker says that human beings are reminded of this central conflict every time they shit.  Angels who shit, he calls us, though more elegantly than that.) Unless we can believe whole-heartedly in our hero projects or bury our heads in the sand, we are eventually driven mad by our dual-nature, hence the need for psychoanalysis.

So back to "What do you think happens when we die?" the question that is the source of so much anxiety. It's impossible to answer and so here is my alternative: "What do you HOPE happens when we die?"

This shift makes it possible to step away from a need to be right or wrong or reasonable and gives you the freedom to engage with death in an imaginative way.    Hope has no boundaries.  It doesn't have to account for the Pope or Richard Dawkins.  You can make your afterlife the fulfillment of your deepest, dearest desires.  

For me, I will be greeted enthusiastically by people who know and love me.  My body will feel buoyant and strong, without pain.  I will be surrounded by flowers, waterfalls, a luminous city.  We will sing, dance, feast, and laugh.  Our favorite dogs and cats will be there.  I will finally understand the answers to all the puzzles that confounded me when I was alive and I'll be able to see how it all fits together.  After some time of celebration and rest, the boss will come and say, "Do you want to go back?  What do you want to experience this time?  Do you want to be a worm or a bear or a mother or father or what?"  And that's when I'll say, "Put me back in New Jersey and let me be a singer and a teacher one more time." 

My theory is that if we strengthen this part of our brains--if we practice thinking of death in a positive, playful way, we may be able to save ourselves so much mental turmoil.  If we develop this habit of creative visualization around death, when the time comes, instead of being sad and scared, we will expect an adventure.  We will be primed for the dream to come true.  

I keep posting on FB and then deleting. I don't want to be a buzzkill. Reading this book, Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault, makes me worried about the rise of AI and automation. We are still stuck in the paradigm of self-worth equals work, salvation equals work, godliness equals work. Arbreit macht frei, to quote a phrase. If less human labor will be necessary in the coming decades in order to sustain production, how will we reconcile that?

Currently our choice is between a proponent of christofacsism and a prosecutor, so it's not looking great. 

I listened to a talk recently about how tech companies have to give the illusion of potential growth to satisfy shareholders even when no real meaningful growth is currently possible (Meta, for example, having saturated the social media market). As a result they intentionally break tools/features that users like so that they can claim this as "innovation." There is a way to connect this phenomenon, probably, with the more general contrived growth of unchecked capitalism. All the products being made that are stupid and unnecessary, all the services being hawked that are certainly wasteful and possibly harmful. 

It's annoying and disorienting that, in the political sphere, words have different meanings. Conservatism, for example. Wouldn't it be nice if it meant conserving the value in our economy, conserving the value in our natural resources and a rejection of just growth for growth's sake alone (and then having to contend with the offshoot of that growth which in terms of AI/automation is going to be an increase in "idleness" which will be criminalized/exploited)?

I wish there were another way to live. One wholly outside this geo-political circus. 

New mantra: every feeling is a transition. 

Bukowski and the Bible

The sacred and profane 

Rivers, trains, and whiskey

All metaphors for pain

Write it down and solve it 

Hush the swirling din

Get it down just how you like it 

Then forget what book it's in 

Odds and Ends

A feeling in a dream like zooming toward the ground in falling or zooming up toward the sky like flying I couldn't tell which.  Is it a correlate to a phase change after death or driving in New Jersey?

The way our work bags sit in chairs like people.  Representing noise and moments at the dining room table.  Eating up the air.  

Another dream of an old enemy and he had the face of a child.  

Trying to stop centering myself.  Maintain eye contact with others.  Mining for song lyrics, images that will sound true.  

My singing teacher said to feel singing instead of always judging the sound of it.  The thought of that makes me want to cry.  

36 days off of social media.  It's like recovering from a substance.  

 "Life coaching" and therapy services are both exorbitantly expensive, so I guess I am going to have to coach myself.  What a relief and so convenient that I already know everything.  Just kidding, but I feel like I am getting closer having been coached by romantic misadventure, miscarriage, cancer, the pandemic, years of being a working person, etc. 

Here's one belief I have that keeps reverberating through the years: you need a lot less than you think you need to be happy.  A lot less.  In terms of relationships, in terms of possessions, in terms of physical/mental abilities, in terms of everything.  The additive process as a path to joy is a capitalist lie.  Subtraction is the way.  

Shave off the branches and you strengthen the core.  I am going to write a song about it.  Take away beauty, take away the validation you get from others, take away a bunch of physical junk that only gathers dust and weighs you down, take away all the things you thought you were (daughter, teacher, singer, young, pretty, smart, friendly, generous).  What's left?  Can you be happy with that?  Can you learn how to be?  

More and more I realize, the essence of joy is just consciousness, experience.  It's that simple.  Against all odds in this swirling universe some particles got thrown together and became self aware.  Just enjoy it.  Like Judee Sills sings, "However we are is ok." 

Put me outside the "I fought cancer," the "I beat cancer" talk.  Put me outside the conception of cancer as sparring partner.  That's not how it is.  I MADE cancer.  Somebody had to cut it out of me, and I was grateful, but the cancer was me.  My body humbled me, terrified me, put my brain through its paces and in the end it taught me.  Showed me things I have never seen.  

For a person who is already always existentially crisising, this was not just that.  This was something experiential, not just theoretical.  Like when I lost my baby, I felt like a wounded animal.  Around me the world became more real, came into focus.  My senses sharpened.  I could feel oblivion all around the edges of everything, waiting.  

You have to make friends with what's waiting or you can never relax.  Not saying I've done it, I just know it has to be that way if you're going to have real peace.  This got me closer, that's for sure.  Look how each blade of grass shines and turns, feel the facility of breathing, sit down to have a pee and get up again. Again, and again and again.  Every moment is a miracle.  Every moment is borrowed from the thing that's waiting.