It's the end of the world

I haven't written anything here in over a month. Instead I have focused on fiction, and have written quite a bit, to my surprise.

So I have decided to close the shutters on the window into The Shows in My Mind. For now at least. Why keep a blog if I never write here? I may open it back up at some point, I may not. Time will tell.

Thanks to those who have read and commented, though there weren't that many of either kind.

Things change. Some things disappear, others appear.

Not only am I closing the blog, but my writing group may be disintegrating as well. For three years now there has been a core of people around which others have come and gone. Could Be King, the only published fiction writer among us, has changed jobs and won't have time to focus on much else besides writing his next novel. Finally Has A Kid finally has a kid, and will be spending most of her time being a mom.

We will try to keep meeting after the last scheduled huddle in December, and I dearly hope we can keep going. The writing class as well as the online community that followed it has fallen apart, so the huddle and my cronies are the only group I have to fuel my inspiration in the way that only fellow writers. Plus its a nice feeling to go there and feel inadequate too...

So. Bye for now. I will still be watching the shows in my minds, and I hope you will be watching the ones in your mind.

I don't have a TV now, but that's okay. The shows in my mind are almost always better.
- The Maxx, episode 1

Home sweet home

I arrived back in Sweden last Saturday. The jetlag wasn't too bad, I was back on track in two days. Went back to work on Wednesday, where several people told me I looked really calm. One colleague wanted to rub up against me twice a day to absorb some of it. Sort of like rubbing the belly of a Buddha for luck.

My hope is that this zen-like trance will last at least a week. On Wednesday it felt like I was a spectator, watching from outside as others ran around like headless chickens in the office. A smile on my face all day long.

Something which didn't put a smile on my face was my grandfather passing away on October 1st. Olov Larsson, the rock of my family, was finally eroded by the river of life to a point where he fell apart. Everything points to him going quietly, just going to sleep, which is a relief. He was 98 years old, had spent the last few months in a care facility and refused to eat for the past few weeks, so no one is surprised he passed. Still, I'll probably cry like a baby at the funeral. 'tis what I do. I'm thinking about buying a pipe to leave instead of flowers. I think he would have liked that.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on

We saw Anton Corbijn's “Control” on Sunday. Spectacular movie, even though I'm not really a Joy Division fan. Black and white, long sweeping shots, and so mind-numbingly tragic I think it's a good idea to hide away any razorblades you have at home if you're going to see it.

On Sunday night I had nightmares. If you know anything about Joy Division, you know how that particular story ends. To me it wasn't surprising that I dreamed of Henrik. So sleep was frequently interrupted, and I was a very unhappy camper on Monday morning.

Then, between Tuesday and Wednesday, I had nightmares again. And bad. Really frickin' bad. I woke up screaming, at 0330. I haven't done that since I was fifteen or so, dreaming of falling endlessly into darkness. Unless you count that one time when a painting fell off the wall over the bed and landed on my leg.

This time the nightmares were all nooses, dead bodies and spiders. Big hairy fuckers. Spiders are the emissaries of Satan, only eclipsed by earwigs, who are actual children of Beelzebub. And the nooses, swinging from rafters, from staircases, made from rope, extension cords, wire. Bodies strewn all over, cold and dead. So I woke up screaming, and during what little sleep I had the nightmares continued to plague me.

Photo by Lynn Radeka. Used with permission

I really do believe that dreams are all about the subconscious processing things that your conscious mind can't or won't. I know I still have a lot of issues around his death, and that my number one fear is the death of those closest to me. The most powerful dreams I've ever had have been about death and loss, usually involving people I care deeply about.

So what to do? I'm not sure there's anything I can do. This time the nightmares were obviously triggered by the film, so maybe I should avoid pop culture references to suicide, especially by noose. Then I guess it's all down to time. That and maybe a couple of therapy sessions...

Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem

I was on the train the other morning without my headphones, since I was going out to eat with some guys from work (Don't Spell My Name Wrong, You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Hungry and Handsome Karl) and generally don't like lugging player and headgear around when I'm going out after work.

When my headphones aren't on, I can't help listening to other peoples' conversations. I'm nosy, and a very curious cat. Hasn't killed me yet, knock on wood. Though it could have once.

This was maybe a year ago, on the train. I'm already sitting down, when this guy walks on, talking on his phone, sporting all the attributes of a guy who goes to soccer games not for the joy of the sport, but for crackin' skulls and takin' names. And he wasn't a big guy. It was the clothes he wore (yes, I'm prejudiced in this way and quite satisfied with that, thanks) and the attitude he projected.

So naturally I can't help myself. I turn off my iPod to listen in to his conversation. It contained, but was not exclusive to, these words. Blood. Fist. Cops. Fuck. Shit. Motherfucker. Kick. The shit out of. Laugh.

And so on. It was like a narrative to Romper Stomper. And of course I couldn't keep myself from looking up, from looking over at this very image of a mentally healthy, civilized member of society. And of course he noticed me looking. Something flickered to life in his eyes, like the light from the bulb that swings back and forth over your head as you're strapped to a chair, watching various body fluids of yours ooze across the floor. It was not a warm, glowing glow to bask in.

I'm a pretty big guy (this was actually written as “I'm a pretty guy” for quite a while until I corrected it. Freudian slip?). I wear black. I have a big goatee. People do get out of my way on the street. Even though I wouldn't hurt a fly. Well, a fly I would hurt. And spiders. And various other creepy crawlies. But I get side-tracked here. Again. Of course the way I look can backfire as well. I can imagine people looking at me, thinking “I should beat up that guy to look cool in front of my friends”, or just thinking “I'm a psycho. I should totally beat up that guy”. Though psychos, like the afore-mentioned well-adjusted fellow on the train, don't really think. See? That prejudice again. Yay!

I looked down. Buried my nose in my book. Turned the iPod back on. Hoped he would ignore me. He stared me for maybe ten seconds before going back to his phone conversation, probably telling his friend how he stared down this weakling on the train. Whatever. Better a live weakling than a dead fighter.

So again. I'm curious. And the other morning on the train I couldn't help but listen. A man was telling a woman how his girlfriend was working on a novel. Had been working on a novel for seven years. How it was an awesome novel, all ready and polished. The woman asked him why she hadn't sent it to a publisher. “Well, you know, she's a perfectionist”, came the answer. Then he continued. And oh how he continued. “She writes like Hemingway, but in a sort of thriller way.” Ehm...what? I'm not a reader of Hemingway, but know enough to know that he's considered a literary giant. To compare someone to him, on their first novel? Maybe a little too much confidence in your girlfriend there, mister.

Now, for all I know this may be the Next Great Swedish Writer. This may be the Novel To End All Novels. But I doubt it. And again. This is my prejudice talking. And again, I'm satisfied with that. Plus, you know, it would be a devastating blow to my writer's ego...

No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year

I have vivid memories of my grandparents’ place. A big old house, some unnamed shade of green bleached by the sun, sitting at the end of a short gravel road, the massive yard dropping down behind it, rolling hills and all. I remember running around on those vast expanses of grass, with my brother and cousins and one in a long line of dogs my grandfather had.

I only really remember one of those dogs, Manne, a golden retriever that my brother called his cow. This was never questioned nor explained, it was simply one of those things that children say and that adults take for granted.

To me it seemed that the yard and the basement was the domain of my grandfather, while my grandmother ruled the house proper. She ran a very tight ship, though this is mostly a feeling and not the result of a series of hard facts that I can point to. Most of all I remember her cooking. The soft chocolate cake, the fish dish now named “Grandma fish”, and the peas. There were always too many peas. And my brother always ate them all. For those that know my brother, this should come as no great surprise.

The basement was a land of wonder and mystery to us. This was where we watched 8 mm films that my grandfather had shot with a handheld. This was where he had built a model railroad, landscaped with trees and buildings and tiny people. This was where the big boiler that kept the house warm lived, a massive monstrosity that smelled of grease and burning wood.

Watching films down there was like traveling in time. We would all walk down the stairs and then stare in awe as the pictures flickered to life. The color was off, everything was tinted red and the people captured there bore only a slight resemblance to my father and his brothers and sisters, as they gallivanted around on the shore of some lake, sunned themselves on the cliffs and boogie-boarded behind a boat. That’s all I remember from those films, though I’m sure we watched others as well.

The model railroad was a rare attraction, something we only got to see on a few occasions, and always displayed to us with a note of pride in my grandfather’s voice. It was a complex construction, twists and turns around a large room, and activated by an old-fashioned switching box, which brought the whole thing to life. That box seemed truly magical to me. Looking back, I think I might have expanded the size of the railroad construction in my imagination, and made it into something it was not, a fairytale land where tiny people came alive at the flick of a switch and trains always ran on time.

The boiler also took on aspects of the fantastic, of magic and the unexplained. My grandfather purchased a valve or controller or some other kind of thingamajig, a tiny little box that would somehow enhance the performance of the boiler, and told us that a small Japanese was working down there. In my mind this meant that a small man was actually working inside the boiler, throwing switches and splicing cables and shoveling wood chips. It wasn’t until years later that I understood what he had actually meant.

There was one other place in the house that truly belonged to my grandfather. His chair, in the corner of the living room right in front of the TV. He would sit there, stuff his pipe with tobacco and smoke. Always that smoke.

My grandmother passed away in 1984. It was sudden, and by all accounts very peaceful. By then they had moved out of the house and to an apartment. I have fragmented memories of the night the call came, and remember nothing of going to a funeral. Perhaps my brother and I were deemed to young to attend.

It’s been over twenty years and my grandfather is still around, just a few years shy of a hundred. There’s a theory that men rarely last long after their wives have passed away. Whoever coined that theory hasn’t met my grandfather. The river of life has simply parted around his blocky frame, and only started eroding him in recent years. And he still smokes.

In many ways the smell of pipe smoke is more a part of my memories than any visual input from that house. It permeated everything, and followed my grandfather wherever he went, like an extension of his body and soul. Movies, model trains, the dogs, the yard, everything is secondary to that smell. It has come to represent a feeling of contentment and happiness, the essence of family and summers, and the youthful innocence that is only a memory now.


This text was written a few years back for my creative writing class. I unearthed it from the depths of my hard drive today, like hidden treasure, and polished it a bit. I'm posting it today, since my grandfather Olof, now 98 years old, is in the hospital, and is in a bad way. He's lost 20 pounds in two weeks, and is deteriorating. Knowing him, he's probably furious at the thought.

He is the last of that generation left in my family, on either side. I love him dearly, and writing this now, I feel like crying. I hope he goes in peace.

Sometimes dead is better

I've found the concept of the elephant graveyard interesting for quiet a while. It is fiction, with a powerful mythical quality that I can't help but find fascinating. Like something out of a fairy tale.

It is my firm belief that we have a fly graveyard in our windows. Flies from all over the country come to our home to die. Some of them wander around aimlessly between the glass panes, before ending up on their backs, dead. As dodos.

And as an add-on. Not sure if anyone reading this cares, but Darren Sproles, gods (if I were the least bit religious, all kinds of expletives would have been inserted here. I choose to go with a very non-denominational expression instead)! The very definition of a game-winning player.

In Memoriam

(something like this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but I'm a dumbass and didn't bring my mobile broadband stuff with me on the trip, so it had to wait until I was once again in wireless range)

Yesterday it was two years ago Henrik killed himself. Mah Girl and I hooked up with Mikaela, Henrik's ex, and went to the cemetery where his ashes are scattered. We lit candles, stood in silence for a while and then talked a bit about Henrik and life. Considering what Mikaela has been going through (lots of info on that on her blog, in Swedish), it was good to see her and to see her smiling.

The visit was better than I expected. I have been dreading it for quite some time now, but it turned out to be a calm and spiritual experience. I still miss Henrik, but I know now that time will allow me to come to terms with his death, even though I'll always wonder why.

Henrik. Happy. Hairy. Hilarious.

The text below was written early 2007, two or three months after he died. I was unable to write anything during that winter, and realized that the only way to get around that was to write about him. About all the things I was feeling. The text is completely unedited since I wrote it, and I probably won't touch a word of it. It isn't about guilt or anything really, just something I had to get out to move on.

I was considering bringing a copy of the text to the cemetery yesterday, to leave it there, but I didn't, since I didn't want anyone to read it. Last night, on my back in a bed I've never slept in before, I realized that internalizing this again will only bring about writer's block or other problems. So I'm posting it. And next week I'm leaving a copy at the cemetery.

For Henrik. Rest in peace. Vaffanculo!


NOVEMBER

It felt like falling. Down into some dark abyss, where you know a rock hard floor is waiting, but you can’t see it. That whole day, after I found out, felt like falling. I’m not sure I have landed since. I’m not sure I want to.

Death is never easy to deal with, though sometimes it seems like a good thing. My grandmother passed away after spending several years in a care facility, slowly shrinking and forgetting the beginnings of conversations at the end of them. Who she really was only became visible during brief moments, like glimpses into someone else’s life, a life clouded behind dementia and the smell of disinfectant. For some of us, her death felt like a release. An end to suffering, for her and us. I loved my grandmother, but I didn’t cry at her funeral. I was 20. Her death had been processed earlier, I think. A death of the soul, not the body.

During the ten plus years since, I’ve only had to deal with one single death, until November. I keep wondering if that’s normal. Maybe the cliché has it right, that the number of deaths around us multiply as we grow older. At least those that really matter.

He wasn’t a close friend, really. We met in college, those first days when the class is trying to establish some sort of social hierarchy, rearranging and bonding according to opinions, shared interests and plain dumb luck. We didn’t like each other at first. In fact, we each thought the other was an obnoxious, arrogant loud-mouth. That lasted about a week. Over time, he became the only one in the class I really got close to. We spent hours at a rundown café, talking music and other things, when we should have been studying, and did a radio show for a few months with a bespectacled madman named Victor.

We drifted apart after that year, as you do when you end up in different places, with different people. New social circles were created, old ones revisited or resurrected. Too busy with life to really keep in touch, we still tried to. When we both ended up in Stockholm we re-established contact, and managed to work around our respective schedules to hook up for coffee, beer or music at least occasionally.

Looking back at the whole thing, at him, I think maybe he was the one friend that was most like me. Or at least most like me a few years ago. I’ve slowed down, figured out that it’s OK to take some time to myself, with myself, and maybe become a better person through that. I’m not saying I was better than him, I just like the now me better than the then me. Evolution through introspection, and a good deal of psychotherapy.

It never seemed like he slowed down. Always talking quickly, walking quickly, drinking quickly. Always going somewhere. Of course that was part of what endeared him to people. Like me, he knew people everywhere, and I suspect that like me, he had very few really close friends. Somehow that tempo, the constant running through life, stops you from forging deeper bonds with those you pass. You meet too briefly. I know it was that way for me as I went rushing off to whatever was waiting around the next corner, before I had to slow down. Knowing what I know now, I wished we had seen each other more. I wish we had taken the time, both of us, to stop and talk, at length, about the things that matter. Maybe things would have been different then.

He killed himself in November.

Fuck you, you fuckin' fuck

Fuck. F U C K.

It's really the only word that fits. My headache is acting up. Tiny, tiny men run around inside my head, between my right temple and my right eye, and play with teeny tiny jackhammers.

Go here for more info on the headache of headaches.

This week is one of contrasts. On Thursday I go north for three days of creative writing with my class, which is always inspiring and fills me with energy. The same day it's two years ago my friend Henrik took his own life. Again...fuck.

I've only had to deal with a handful of deaths in my life, so I don't really have a frame of reference, but I do know that his death affected me harder than others have, and probably will. The main reason why is probably that he was like me, in a lot of ways, and if I can see myself in him, then chances are I could probably recognise at least some of the reasons why he decided to end his life.

Now, I've never contemplated suicide, but as far as anyone could tell, friends, family, everyone, neither had Henrik. Then again, they do say that people that do commit suicide never talk about it, but that might be a cliché. Put together with the fact that no one knows why Henrik killed himself, I find myself faced with the possibility that things may surface in my life that sends my thoughts in that very dark direction.

I know this is unreasonable. But feelings often are.

Screw you

So my landlord woke up and realized there is a problem. With Smoking Woman.

A new security door will be ordered, at our expense of course, but hey, it will eliminate the noise from the stairwell (though I will miss being able to hear Sport Fanatic neighbour scream like Homer).

Also they will measure if the pressure in our apartment is too low, thus allowing Smoking Woman's evil vapors to encroach on our peace of mind. The ventilation, which dates from the sixties and was probably designed in the darkest regions of the Soviet Union, might have to be tweaked. I fully expect this to be perfomed by some long dead service person, brought back to a semblance of life by one of the many necromancers I am sure are in our landlord's employ.

And yes, I'm not writing as much as I would want to. I hope to change that after this weekend when my laptop is back in the game. Words. Do come easy to me.

We apologize for the inconvenience but Windows did not start successfully

*insert long string of curse words here*

I've been using an LG laptop for almost two years now. A fairly powerful but above all portable little friend, that can go with me on writing excursions. Today I downloaded the latest XP upgrade, and now the fucker (as in Windows, not the laptop) won't start properly.

*insert another long string of curse words here*

And while I am, in many ways, both a geek and a technical boy, error handling for PCs is not my forte (and as we all know, not for microwaves either). I have now spent 45 minutes trying to figure out what's wrong, and the only thing I do know is that a lot of other people have similar problems after installing the upgrade. However, exchanges on geek forums quickly get a wee bit too technical for me, so I'm just going to sulk and wait until tomorrow when I can have a real computer geek look at it, at work.

I work with a lot of geeks. Or at least I used to. Now I'm in Sales & Marketing, though still with the word "technical" in my job description, but previously I was below decks in the network department for five years. Some of the people that work there make me look and feel like I don't know which end is up on a laptop. Or an SS7 network, for that matter. Tomorrow I will aim their geekiness at my beloved laptop. A pox on Microsoft in case my geeks can't solve my problem. Well, a pox either way, but an especially virulent one if my laptop be dead.

These are my tombs

I’m a fairly serious music fan. Or rather, music is a very serious thing to me. I have very firm opinions on what I like and don’t like. And above all, what everyone else should like. I’m always right. Except in some cases when I’m up against mistlur…

But sometimes things happen that take it to a whole other level of seriousness even for me.

In November 2006, my friend Henrik passed away. I found out in a very strange way, that I won’t go into now, since it’s a long story, but I was at work and took it hard. I basically just packed up my stuff and rushed out of there. Like always, I pulled on my headphones and pressed Play.

Converge’s “Grim Heart/Black Rose” came on. It’s the only song off “No Heroes” where they use clean, melodious lyrics instead of Bannon’s tortured screams, and at almost ten minutes it’s five times longer than the average song on that album. It’s one of those songs that just builds and builds, layer upon layer of melodies and emotion, until it explodes in all-out Converge signature chaos. I walked to the subway in tears.

Since then that song has been associated with him, and his death, closely tied to the emotions I went through that day. I haven’t been able to listen to it unless I’m in a good mood.

The same goes for Come Sleep’s “For Sleep” (not the version on the album, strangely enough, but the one on the “I Am Ahab” demo – and yes, mistlur, I know it’s called “Skull of Ahab” but I consider myself hardcore enough to go with the first name) and System of a Down’s “Lonely Day”.

We were supposed to go see Come Sleep, Henrik and I, a few days after he passed away. I went anyway, and was again reduced to tears as the band dedicated that particular song to my grief and loss. And the SOAD song was played at the funeral. Again, tears.

All three songs are now tied to him, and those weeks around his passing and his funeral.

Today, on my way to my creative writing group, I went to visit Henrik at the graveyard. I sat on a bench, underneath the drooping branches of an old tree planted there, and listened to “Grim Heart/Black Rose”. At the other end of the bench a woman was sitting, smoking, staring at a vase of flowers on the memory stand. From the looks of her, I would say she was much more recently bereaved.

I felt at peace, and think that I may have, at least on some level, come to terms with the fact that he isn’t around anymore. I still think about him a lot, and probably always will, but the warm memories now far outweigh the horror of finding out he was gone. And so, I have through the passage of time, also come to terms with at least one of those songs. Time will tell if that goes for the other two as well.

Let me help you tie the rope around your neck

So I wrote this post about useless people and nurture vs. nature and inner darkness vs. the goodness of mankind, etc. Basically I’d had a bad day and needed to vent.

I’ve calmed down now (yeah, right), and figured I would continue that train of thought, especially since Joel went to such great lengths to comment.

I don’t believe that the inner core of humans is evil. Neither do I believe that it’s good. Beneath the veneer of civilization, we’re still animals, still the creatures that either hid in the shadows when the predators stalked by or planted our feet and fought, tooth and nail. That fight or flight reflex is still there, and it wakes up when we’re put in a situation that pushes us beyond the limits that we, and society, have set for ourselves.

Because of that, I remain convinced that every human being is capable of lethal violence. It doesn’t matter how much of a non-violent person you are, that primal reflex remains there, dormant.

That aside, I also believe some people are inherently evil. There are some atrocities that people commit that I simply cannot attribute to a messed-up childhood, or to the instinct for violence at our core. There are things that humans simply don’t do. And yes, I acknowledge that abuse or childhood trauma or whatever can make things worse, and probably shape someone who otherwise would have stopped at ripping the wings of insects into something far worse, and I even acknowledge that video games or movies or whatever intense experience there is out there, can act as something of a trigger, though not as a root cause. That, however, is a discussion for another day.

In Western society, we choose to meet such atrocities with prison time, and in some states in the US with the death penalty. I’m not an avid proponent of ending someone’s life, but in some cases, I actually see no other way out. This is not out of any biblical sense of an eye for an eye and all that nonsense. It’s simply because some people, that can no longer be called humans, simply don’t deserve to live.

Case in point: Andrei Chikatilo. This pathetic excuse of a man wanted the death penalty and got it. Can anyone argue that incarcerating him would have made more sense, or that therapy could ever have rehabilitated a man who murdered 52 people over 12 years? And ate some of them?

I claim to be an agnostic of some sort, but I sincerely hope that there’s some deep dark Hell where sadists like Chikatilo endure everlasting pain, or that nothing awaits them beyond death other than a cold lonely grave.

So yes. I’m in favor of killing people occasionally. Please argue with me.

Every head has its own headache

For a few years now I’ve suffered periods of chronic headaches (I know chronic is supposed to be “all the time”, and as such it can’t be periodical, but I don’t know how else to describe it). When it first happened, I had no idea what it was. My right eye got all bloodshot, and I had severe stabbing pains just slightly above and in front of my right temple.

I spent an afternoon at the emergency room, watching an endless parade of old men holding the hands of their dying wives, drug users zonked out of their minds and screaming incoherently, car crash victims, and so on. It was horrible and emotionally draining.

Finally some med student barely out of Anatomy 101 found the time to meet me, had me stand on one leg, made me touch the tip of my nose with my eyes closed, brushed my face with a feather, etc. At first they thought I had Horton’s, which is sometimes called “the suicide headache”.

After being bounced around between a few doctors, I finally ended up with a neurologist at Huddinge hospital, who is part of a team that work exclusively with headaches. The final diagnosis is that I have SUNCT (I’ve learned what the acronym stands for – Short-lasting, Unilateral, Neuralgiform headache attacks with Conjunctival injection and Tearing – but have yet to say it in full while drunk).

SUNCT manifests in a variety of ways. Some people suffer a few hours of attacks and then never feel it again, and some have it all their lives and no drugs help.

I don't like the drugs, but the drugs like me

For me it was periods of attacks, about two months at a time with dozens, sometimes up to a hundred short stabbing attacks every day. I had problems sleeping, couldn’t watch TV for a long time or sit by the computer. I read books, took walks. Cooked a lot. My neurologist prescribed me a few different drugs, before we tried Neurontin. It’s normally used as an enhancer drug for epileptics, when their regular meds can’t do the trick, but also has documented results for various kinds of nerve pains. Such as mine.

For a glorious list of possible side effects and such, go here.

The last time the attacks started was January of 2007. They still haven’t stopped. 19 months and counting. Whoop-de-fucking-do. I eat pills three times a day, at 08:00, 15:00 and 22:00, seven pills in total. 3+2+2.

I’ve had them for so long now that the headache feels like an integral part of me. Which is just sad. The pills go with me everywhere.

Today, while Googling around for Neurontin info I found out that it’s been linked to a couple of suicides in the States. At first I wrote this off as The Land of Law Suits nonsense, until I found this. For a few minutes I seriously considered not eating my pills tonight. Until I read the whole article. A 0.43 percent increase in suicidality. Ehm…hardly something to worry about. I hope.

Dream and Death

I had horrible nightmares last night. Some of the worst I have ever had. All around me, friends dying or dead. Friends burning, friends down wells, friends crawling through glass, friends reaching out to me with blood running from ruptured eyes. Through and through, horrible.

I had to text or email them this morning, to make sure they were ok. I don’t really believe in the precognitive powers of dreams, but this was so powerful I just had to. All of them were fine. Quite a relief.

Death is not something I’m accustomed to dealing with. In all my life, I’ve been to three funerals. Not sure if that’s a lot or few. My grandmother on my mother’s side passed away in 1995, after a long period of decline, and somehow that was a release. My cousin died of an overdose of really bad moonshine, which was a tragedy, but I didn’t really know him. Then my friend Henrik died. He hanged himself in November of 2006. No one knows why. That still haunts me. I might get into why some other time.

Malin wrote about fearing death, about death anxiety, which sort of inspired this entry. I think everyone fears death, on some level, at some point. I know I have. It’s not something I face on any kind of daily basis, but it has happened. It has nothing to do with turning 30, which is two and a half years in the past, but rather a part of being human, I think. Yes, I’m sure age can accelerate that kind of thinking, spiraling one down even further into musings on death, but it hasn’t happened to me. Yet.

It’s been a hot day. My brain feels scrambled. Not really sure what I want to say with this, but I do know that death is natural, and unless you subscribe to the notion of a life after this one, then the years you get here is it. Make the most of them. Live, laugh, love, lust, and a whole host of other l-words. Don’t spend too much thinking about things you can’t change (says Mr. Over analytical). Enjoy. And fight those routines.

The pic is of Morpheus from The Sandman, the only comic ever to be on the New York Times Bestseller List. I intend to enjoy part 2 and 3 of “Absolute Sandman” as soon as the paycheck drops on Friday. Wohoo!