Sunday.
I'm making up for lost time with this post. I've felt un-thoughtful for the past week or so, but good ol' Chinaski got me back on track with his tales of booze and women. Funny stuff. I like it though, because although it's stark and mainly depressing, he tells stories in a way that is unpretentious enough that you feel as though you are there. And Romanticism is pretty, but his poetry is Romantic in the way that the doorknobs are sorrow, in the way that the wind is his friends, in the way that people don't live in houses but something different. Something special and horrid and sordid. It's like Romanticism, DEPPILF.
Isn't it lovely the way people were back then? Patriotic, young forever on the screens and speakers. They're all dead now. It's so sad. That they're all dead or slowly approaching that or halfway there in a bed tonight. It's not fair. We're given so little time. Or a lot. Maybe God is generous, but we're just greedy. Or maybe he's stingy and we're greedy. Either way, we're greedy.
Kind of wasting our time like I'm doing now. When I could be studying for English so that I keep my 97 average and could quite possibly have the highest grade in the class, in the school, and quite possibly get into Cornell where it won't matter if I'm fat or skinny or if I wear glasses because when I walk in the hallway, I have somewhere to be. No one will care if I spend my hours studying math and eating frosting by the gallons and puking, because I'm studying! I'm going somewhere. But that won't happen if I continue to type. So I continue to type.
And it's weird. I wonder what it will feel like, however many years from now (One? Twentytwo? Sixtythree?) when I'm on my deathbed or my deathwhatever and I look back at all the moments I spent just spending. Not with anyone in particular, just being. What will I think? I know that when I reach that point, and there's nothing I can do, I'll be regretful. Not because I wasted my time and didn't accomplish what I wanted to, but because it's a shame I couldn't just live 20 lives and be 20 people and know 20 stories so well. That's why we have Humanity, so we can vicariously live those other 19 lives. And then we won't feel so bad on our deathbeds, because we've lived so much life. That's why I love strangers.
Today at Mass, I looked at all of the people receiving Communion. They were old and young and babies and boys and girls and fat and ugly and pretty and bored and tired and justanotherSundaychurchgo-er. But they all had something to tell me. All of them. Something. Maybe that time that this happen, and now Rubik's Cubes make them think of a girl named Sally. Or how pine trees make them think of their old teacher, Mr. Kauffman. Or how the book "The Great Gatsby" makes them think of warm summer afternoons in the parlor, back in 1956. They all could tell me this. I'd listen and I'd love their stories. Because I think it's odd how everything brings to mind everything else. And I want to know it all! All of it! Why and how and when and the who's, especially.
And you know what else is weird? I found out today how murders happen. It's all because of... undergarments. Yes, undergarments! Just hear me out:
So today, I was fussing with my, erm, undergarment strap, and it was refusing to cooperate. It was early in the morning, I was tired, and I needed to change for Mass.
"COME ON, YOU STUPID THING! Just work! I swear, I'ma kill someone!"
Then I stopped dead in my tracks. ERRRR.
I've always hated that term. "I'll kill ya!" "I could just kill someone right now!" "Kill, kill, kill." I don't want to be a damp blanket, but that phrase is so morbid. I know it's a joke, and no one is really serious when they say it, but it makes me shiver. Because that's how it happens. A real killer, lying dormant beneath the suckling skin, is fussing with his, erm, undergarment strap and he's late for Mass (Yes, killers have gods--they just don't pay as close attention to homilies) and the stupid thing won't work.
"COME ON, YOU STUPID THING! Just work! I swear, I'ma kill someone!"
Later, there is an obituary with a young face and someone buys the newspaper and sees it and says to his buddy, "What a shame. What a sick word. What a sick person. Musta been a helluva sunuvabich." They walk on.
No, no. He wasn't. But the stupid strap wasn't working! And he made an ultimatum with fate, as we so often do: Do this, and I'll do this.
Honestly, it happens. Why couldn't he just have gone commando and saved a life?
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