We can sing just like our fathers
Off to San Diego for work, and excessively grumpy that it's actually easier to stay awake and wait for the Super Shuttle coming in three hours rather than trying to snatch some sleep. No one blow up the moon while I'm gone.
For some reason, my dreams have been especially vivid and action-packed of late. A lot of them involve me arguing with other people. Three nights ago, I dreamed the Queen of England ordered me to be executed for treason by jumping out a window while holding a baby, but it turns out it she was in on it the whole time, and gave me a tupperware container to fake as the baby, and then directed me to a window that was only five feet off the ground. Then we went and hid in a castle, but not her castle. Well, I mean, it might've been, but not her main castle, you know. And last night, I dreamed I got into an argument with Brooks Laich over how we should cook something-- can't recall what, think it was pizza; whatever it was, he was WRONG-- that got so heated, we then refused to talk to each other any further in the dream.
We had Louise's 40th Day ceremony, which I'll actually talk about more in depth later when I can do that. Horribly and hilariously, it fell on her birthday, which is actually the kind of thing she'd get a kick out of. I went down to her grave a while back to leave flowers and firecrackers because it seemed like the kind of thing she'd want, but they don't put up the headstone, of course, for a couple months until the ground settles and I had an awful fifteen minutes or so sort of working out exactly where she was and getting more and more anxious when I couldn't be sure. You would think that would be the sort of thing that would be easy to tell, what with it being fairly a fairly old graveyard, the earth, and having just been there just a month ago.
I am still swinging back and forth between deep depression and blinding anger with occasional periods broken up by vaguely neutral states of being (usually when I'm sleeping, except sometimes not, as per prior paragraph about Brooks Laich testifies) which sucks, but I don't know how to make life not do that, so I figure I'll just keep at it until something's different.
In the meantime, I am somehow hitting a ton of cliches by reading ALL THE POEMS about death and wanting to post them. But then I think, well, you can't post all of them at once, that's just morbid and super cliche. Then I thought, fuck that, I DO WHAT I WANT. And then I think, Yes, but pick one and then space them out so it isn't quite as morbid. Then I fretted over which one. And then I realized, just go with Billy Collins, that's always the answer.
Horoscopes For the Dead
by Billy Collins
Every morning since you fell down on the face of the earth,
I read about you in the newspaper
along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news.
Sometimes I am reminded that today
will not be a wildly romantic time for you,
nor will you be challenged by educational goals
nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.
Another day, I learn that you will miss
an opportunity to travel and make new friends
though you never cared much about either.
I can’t imagine you ever facing a new problem
with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not
be doing that or anything like that on this weekday in March.
And the same goes for the fun
you might have gotten from group activities,
a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.
A dramatic rise in income may be a reason
to treat yourself, but that would apply
more to all the Pisces who are still alive today,
still swimming up and down the stream of life
or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.
But it will come as a relief to learn
that you don’t need to reflect carefully before acting
nor do you have to think more of others,
and never again will creative work take a back seat
to the business responsibilities that you never really had.
And don’t worry today or any other day
about unwanted problems caused by your failure
to interact rationally with your many associates.
No more goals for you, no more pressing matters,
no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,
but then again, you were never thus encumbered.
So leave it to me now
to plan carefully for success and the wealth it brings,
to counsel the dear ones close to my heart
and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way
though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.
I am better off closing the newspaper,
putting on the clothes I wore yesterday
(when I read that your financial prospects were looking up)
then pushing off on my copper-colored bicycle
and pedaling along the road by the shore of the bay.
And you go on being perfect just where you are,
lying there in your beautiful blue suit,
your hands crossed upon your chest
like the wings of a bird who has flown
in its strange migration straight up from earth
and pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac.
Same standards apply for when I'm in San Diego as when I was in Los Angeles. (I had a good time there. I spent a lot of time at the tar pits. Do not spend a lot of time at the tar pits if you don't want to think about death, but otherwise it's a good time.) Per my predictions, the Caps indeed hired their coach and GM, and there was an earthquake. This time, I have no doubt they will hire their 2C while I'm gone, and there will also be a flood. Put money on it, I'm great at these.
For some reason, my dreams have been especially vivid and action-packed of late. A lot of them involve me arguing with other people. Three nights ago, I dreamed the Queen of England ordered me to be executed for treason by jumping out a window while holding a baby, but it turns out it she was in on it the whole time, and gave me a tupperware container to fake as the baby, and then directed me to a window that was only five feet off the ground. Then we went and hid in a castle, but not her castle. Well, I mean, it might've been, but not her main castle, you know. And last night, I dreamed I got into an argument with Brooks Laich over how we should cook something-- can't recall what, think it was pizza; whatever it was, he was WRONG-- that got so heated, we then refused to talk to each other any further in the dream.
We had Louise's 40th Day ceremony, which I'll actually talk about more in depth later when I can do that. Horribly and hilariously, it fell on her birthday, which is actually the kind of thing she'd get a kick out of. I went down to her grave a while back to leave flowers and firecrackers because it seemed like the kind of thing she'd want, but they don't put up the headstone, of course, for a couple months until the ground settles and I had an awful fifteen minutes or so sort of working out exactly where she was and getting more and more anxious when I couldn't be sure. You would think that would be the sort of thing that would be easy to tell, what with it being fairly a fairly old graveyard, the earth, and having just been there just a month ago.
I am still swinging back and forth between deep depression and blinding anger with occasional periods broken up by vaguely neutral states of being (usually when I'm sleeping, except sometimes not, as per prior paragraph about Brooks Laich testifies) which sucks, but I don't know how to make life not do that, so I figure I'll just keep at it until something's different.
In the meantime, I am somehow hitting a ton of cliches by reading ALL THE POEMS about death and wanting to post them. But then I think, well, you can't post all of them at once, that's just morbid and super cliche. Then I thought, fuck that, I DO WHAT I WANT. And then I think, Yes, but pick one and then space them out so it isn't quite as morbid. Then I fretted over which one. And then I realized, just go with Billy Collins, that's always the answer.
Horoscopes For the Dead
by Billy Collins
Every morning since you fell down on the face of the earth,
I read about you in the newspaper
along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news.
Sometimes I am reminded that today
will not be a wildly romantic time for you,
nor will you be challenged by educational goals
nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.
Another day, I learn that you will miss
an opportunity to travel and make new friends
though you never cared much about either.
I can’t imagine you ever facing a new problem
with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not
be doing that or anything like that on this weekday in March.
And the same goes for the fun
you might have gotten from group activities,
a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.
A dramatic rise in income may be a reason
to treat yourself, but that would apply
more to all the Pisces who are still alive today,
still swimming up and down the stream of life
or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.
But it will come as a relief to learn
that you don’t need to reflect carefully before acting
nor do you have to think more of others,
and never again will creative work take a back seat
to the business responsibilities that you never really had.
And don’t worry today or any other day
about unwanted problems caused by your failure
to interact rationally with your many associates.
No more goals for you, no more pressing matters,
no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,
but then again, you were never thus encumbered.
So leave it to me now
to plan carefully for success and the wealth it brings,
to counsel the dear ones close to my heart
and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way
though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.
I am better off closing the newspaper,
putting on the clothes I wore yesterday
(when I read that your financial prospects were looking up)
then pushing off on my copper-colored bicycle
and pedaling along the road by the shore of the bay.
And you go on being perfect just where you are,
lying there in your beautiful blue suit,
your hands crossed upon your chest
like the wings of a bird who has flown
in its strange migration straight up from earth
and pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac.
Same standards apply for when I'm in San Diego as when I was in Los Angeles. (I had a good time there. I spent a lot of time at the tar pits. Do not spend a lot of time at the tar pits if you don't want to think about death, but otherwise it's a good time.) Per my predictions, the Caps indeed hired their coach and GM, and there was an earthquake. This time, I have no doubt they will hire their 2C while I'm gone, and there will also be a flood. Put money on it, I'm great at these.