GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #247: MORTALITY

(This entry to be read to the tune of this song.)


My body has been consistently trying to kill me for the last few years. You would think that my literary estate would be at the front of my mind. Well, I put it off and put it off and put it off because I had faith that somehow I would survive. What a fucking stupid idea. I'm surprised 2016 failed to take me.


But I got it done a few months ago. So yeah, if that blood infection virus thingy killed me, my literary estate would have been secure. There's that.


But then there's other stuff. What happens to my Twitter when I die? My Facebook? My bank accounts? My PayPal? Everything else? Honestly, one of my biggest quandaries was this: if I died, who would know? My family. Some close friends. No one else.


I took some time to write it out, and it made me feel odd. Right now, as I stand (or hover like a madman above this glowing electronic device that could possibly blow the kneecap off of the world), when I die there will be someone who will have my passwords. They will post something to my Facebook. And then they'll write something else to link to that Facebook post for the Twitter people.


I have written you all a message from beyond the grave. That's some Future Mystic Bullshit for you right there.


When I was a kid I remember my grandparents taking me out to the middle of nowhere to show me their tombstone. Both of them are still alive (for now), and they have their tombstone already. Their names are on it. Their birth years are on it. All it needs is their bodies under its ground and their death dates. How fucking odd is that?


That's what it feels like to have an envelope on my night stand that says, "In the event of my death," on it.


The very thought that the world will continue to work after I'm gone is obscene. Dammit, I'm the only one who matters, right? The world is supposed to end with my death. Nothing matters after I've breathed my last.


It's a weird thought that occurs to me every once in a while. In my heart of hearts I know that I'm a small cog in the giant machine of life, and when I die there will be a fresh part to take my place. But dammit, there's an indignant part of me who insists I'm vital to the continuation of existence. That part of me is fifteen years old no matter how old I get.


Here's the bad news: everyone reading this right now is going to die. Here's the good news: everyone reading this right now is going to die. Life is a snake constantly eating its own tail. Or, if you prefer your philosophy to come from an HBO show, time is a flat circle.


We all have that adolescent asshole living in our psyches. But we also know that (s)he is an asshole.


Is there an afterlife? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that our energy leaves our body and gets recycled into the universe. I don't mean to say that our consciousness survives. I don't think it does. I think whatever we were gets eaten by the worms. They take that energy to make more worms. Until some fisherman digs them out of the ground and uses them to capture fish. That energy goes into the fish. And then it goes into the fisherman and his family. And so on and so forth.


One thing seems certain: we will all be a fisherman's shit before we become something else. Life's cycle takes a while before we become something bigger again.


Sweet dreams.