The More Pictures I Take the Longer I Live

I wouldn’t know my father if he bumped into me on the street. Of course he’s been dead for forty years so the prospect of that actually happening is probably fairly slim. My mother on the other hand I would probably recognize, but I would initially think she looked like somebody else, an old movie actor perhaps, or an author whose picture I saw on the back cover of a book.

The thing is, no matter how much we may have loved, or perhaps even still love, these people, their memories fade.

There is a picture of my father in a round gold frame in my house in which he is sitting on steps, or a bench, or the bottom of a bleacher. His elbows rest on his knees, his hands hanging limply from his wrists. His back is arched and his gaze is focused on someone or something not in the picture. His hair is white, his shirt collar opened at the neck, It is spring, or summer.

I pass that picture at least once a day and once I day I ask myself, “Who is that man?”

My mother is less of a problem for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I actually knew my mother, not so my father, and see her in the face of my sister Pam. Indeed Pam is so much the apparent reincarnation of my mother that I sometimes have to stop myself from asking her what it’s like on the other side. Well, I guess that’s not really true, or not completely anyway. I’m never really tempted to ask if I have anything to look forward to or fear when I am sent on my merry way, but I am sometimes taken aback at how much my sister Pam does look like my mother.

It’s a funny thing I guess, funny in the way rocks are not, but what if the memories we have of the dearly departed are all that keeps their afterlife going, like fuel for a car. What if, as time passes, and our memories of them fade, they feel their substance (whatever that substance might be) dissipating, like a breath of air on a cold day?

 I don’t know what this would mean, really. Maybe it would simply be a way to make room for new arrivals in the after life. Maybe that place, like this one, suffers, on occasion, from overpopulation. Maybe those who are brought back from apparent death, couldn’t cross over for the simple reason that there was no room, just yet, on the other side.

Of course this brings up an intriguing possibility. If we can’t move from here to there if there is no room there, and if there is no room there because memories are still strong here, the very proliferation of pictures and videos brought about because of digital technology may very well be our ticket to a very long life, and maybe even immortality.

What more reason do I need to go out and buy my new video camera with an external mike jack. The more pictures I take the longer I live. Hmmmm. 

Death be not Paranoid

If you want to make yourself crazy, think about death. I don’t mean the manner in which you will ultimately die. In that regard there are really only two possibilities, you go quickly or you linger; you either die instantly from a piano that crushes you on the congested and cacophonous streets of New York city while on your way to see a play (which you obviously will not see), or you linger interminably while insidious legions of cancer cells eat your body from the inside out.

No, we’re all going to die. It is merely a question on how, and for the dyspeptic, when.

It’s what comes next that has the ability to turn the hair follicles gray. I mean what if the Catholics are right? Thou shalt not kill, they tell us. But I have killed. I’ve killed, either intentionally or by accident, hundreds if not thousands of bugs, from irredeemably putrid and foul flies, to vampirous mosquitos, to the incineration of ants (via a magnifying glass, what boy has not salivated at such lurid serial killing).

Thou shalt not kill. They don’t specify what, exactly is not to be killed. It is assumed you are not supposed to kill each other, but everything else is pretty much fair game. But what if they got this part of the Thou shalt not kill edict wrong. What if, as I believe, God does not discriminate? What if, to him, killing is killing? It’s not what you kill, but the act of killing itself. That would mean we would all have the dubious pleasure or burning in Hell for an eternity when we finally shuffle off this mortal coil, kick the bucket, bite the dust, pass on, and die. My sister saved me when I was a child and my right pants leg caught on fire. I escaped with a scar on that leg the size of the palm of your hand, and whereas I don’t remember a lot about the event, I do remember that it was painful. And yet as painful as it was I would guess an eternity of fiery immolation would probably be more painful still. I don’t know that for sure, obviously, I’m just guessing.

And of course we all hear about the Muslim afterlife so many of these terrorists seem intent upon securing for themselves, that afterlife in which they will apparently have access to a finite number of willing and able virgins.

On the surface that might sound appealing, but there is something these terrorists, and anyone else lusting after that particular orgiastic after life, should consider when it comes to those nubile young wenches. How long do you suppose they will actually be able to keep you interested? A year maybe? Two? Ten? That might seem like a long time, but remember, we’re talking an eternity here. The Hindus have a palpable description of eternity. It is the amount of time it would take, using the swipe of a feather, to reduce the Himalayas to a single grain of sand. You get a feeling for eternity when you look at it that way.

So after the glow is gone what do you do with the rest of eternity? And what if, just what if, there is some unspoken consequence awaiting you when you do, as you certainly will, lose interest in those sullen sirens. Maybe it starts to get a little toasty after that, if you follow my train of thought.

OK, so maybe you’re an atheists or an agnostic, and you either simply don’t believe in God, or think you might, but no one has offered you any definitive proof of his existence (I would offer a Solar eclipse as that proof. Consider, it is the relative distances of the sun and moon from each other and the size of the moon relative to the sun that allows an eclipse to occur. I find it difficult to believe this is mere coincidence). For them death is perhaps merely a cessation of life, the blackness of sleeping without the dreaming.

Sure, I guess that has as much validity as any other after life existence, except that it seems to me it would have been a fairly wasted effort on the part of God to give a being existence and (purported) intelligence for seventy or eighty or ninety years and then snuff out that existence without any opportunity for a second chance to do better, or to move onto a higher plane or existence. One might ask, why bother, especially if the lifetime of a man is to God what the lifetime of a Mayfly might be to a man.

And of course there will be those who ask, “but what about the good stuff?” Right. Eternal salvation. Basking in the glow of God’s grace. Once again, we’re talking about an eternity here. How long before even that gets old?

As you can see I’m driving myself crazy here. This is one of those things that, once you start thinking about it, it tends to get out of hand. So I think I’ll just stop here. I could go on, and I probably will at some point, but for now I’ll let you get back to sleep (or maybe you should wake up if you’ve been reading this-WAKE UP!!!!!).

Anyway, for those of you who actually made it this far, congratulations and thank you, and may your life be all you might hope it would be. More importantly, though, may you die in your sleep and may what comes next be more than an eternity of darkness, or pain, or boredom.