It is my nightly ritual to get into bed at around 1:00 am and read until I’m drowsy enough to sleep. The other night, I put my book down and surveyed my bedroom. I was suddenly overcome with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia for it, if it’s possible to feel nostalgia for the present. My husband walked in and I blurted out, “I’m going to miss this bedroom when I’m dead.” Instead of being pissed off about how morbid I am, he surprised me by laughing and saying, “Well, then you have it better than some people!”

I just love my bedroom! I love our big bed, nicknamed Snuggy if you must know. I love the art on the walls and the heavy velvet curtains from Ikea. I love my antique dresser covered with piles of jewelry and religious shit. I love my thriftshop chinoiserie and crappy velvet chair.

It struck me today that there must be lots of things I’ll miss when I’m dead. And that I should start appreciating them now while I can. I think we should all do this.

I’ll start:

I will miss burgers and fries, Pollo Loco chicken, and chips and salsa. I’ll miss frozen Indian dinners. I’m already starting to miss the first cup of morning coffee after the coffee machine does a little song.

I’ll miss Nicole Wallace on MSNBC. She seems so incredibly nice besides being smart and funny.  I’ll probably miss that SNL guy who does an uncanny  and hilarious imitation of Trump. I’ll miss hearing my favorite songs on the car radio. Obviously I can hear them any time I want to, but everyone knows it’s the surprise that makes it feel like a gift.

I’ll miss getting packages from Sephora. Free shipping and easy returns!

I’ll miss changing my nail polish. It’s relaxing and it makes me feel arty.

I’ll miss my favorite thriftshop, where the octogenarian volunteers start calling our “We’re closing” every five minutes, starting 45 minutes before closing time.

I will miss exchanging pleasantries with strangers, which always makes me feel like a human being. I’ll miss our Christmas Eve parties, which remind  me that I’m lucky to have people I love, who love me back.

I’ll miss the triumph of returning something to Zara even after washing it twice, like I did today with some awful baggy jeans.

Of course I’ll miss my husband but not as much as he’ll miss me (because he’ll have to get into Snuggy alone). And I’ll miss my darling dog, Kora.

That’s about it for now. How about you? I really want to know!

If you’ve ever been a child or a parent, you’re well acquainted with the aggrieved outcry, “But that’s not fair!” I was already a seasoned mother the first time I heard another mother smugly reply to her kid, “Well, life isn’t fair!” It was upsetting. Why does anyone think that’s a good lesson to teach??

I mean, duh, life isn’t fair, as we found out for the billionth time on Saturday. It’s so fucking unfair that they won’t find that cunt guilty as charged. It’s unfair that he gets to get away with so much corruption and inhumanity when everyone else has to suffer.

So much unfairness, but why shouldn’t we let children strive to practice and expect fairness? Just because we can’t have it doesn’t mean it’s not an honorable value. Fairness is a universal concept and ideal. It’s hardwired into us. “Studies have shown” that even chimps understand fairness. There’s some experiment with bananas that illustrates this but I’m too stoned to remember the details.

Children just have an innate understanding of fairness, and it isn’t our job to turn them into cynics.

I may just be pathologically immature in still being shocked when things aren’t fair. I can’t seem to accept the unfairness of it all. I still whine, “So unfair!” at least once a day. I always say it when our Netflix won’t load, because it’s NOT FAIR.

If you expect everything to be unfair, though, you’ll start to think it doesn’t matter. You’ll be like a Republican senator! And no one wants that.

Here’s an example: My mother-in-law is 104 and not happy. She can’t see or walk or do anything but on she goes. It’s so not fair!

Likewise, I am unable to be with either of my sons, and surely that’s unfair. The universe is indifferent to fairness. But people have certain primal instincts that operate without logic.

I want things to be fair against all odds, and I want you to want that too. If you have kids and haven’t yet assured them that life isn’t fair, I hope you won’t.

Going back to my mother-in-law (because I’m that stoned) I can’t understand why people react to her age with, How wonderful! or Bless her heart! There is nothing wonderful about such advanced old age, despite that French Nun who insists on living to 117. It’s led to my husband and I affirming a wish to die before everything craps out. My husband once said he’d be ready at around 75, but of course he’s extended it a few years.

Have you Boomers come to a decision about old age? Have you settled upon a reasonable expiration date? I just read a quote by Nabokov, about a disliked writer who had lived to an advanced and “entirely unnecessary” old age, and I laughed out loud. 117 and even 104 fit into that category. Bless everyone’s heart.

For me, ten more years might be enough. I’d like to die with my hair and teeth, let alone a functioning bladder. I think that would be more than fair.

You?

(c) Diane Arbus

Now that I spend my whole life on the couch watching TV, I’ve developed relationships with a bunch of commercials, some involving ritualized behavior on my part.

When the DealDash guy boasts about getting suitcases for less than 40 nollars, I have to shout “NOLLARS!” at him. Check him out below.

Then there’s the lady who says smugly, “I don’t add up my regrets…” and I have to shout, “YOU SHOULD!”

Fuck her, you know?

I hate old ladies bragging about how active they are. I especially hate seeing them play with their grandchildren, that’s how bitter I am.

A new  commercial I’m enjoying is the one for the PureWick female catheter. In this one, a woman asks her incontinent mother how she slept. What I like is their diction and decorum. They speak like Shakespearean actresses. It is so comically unlike caring for my 103 year old mother-in-law, who wants to get up and pee a thousand times a night. All her caretakers have begged her to stop doing this and it is driving everyone crazy.

I could watch those two actresses for hours. They should do a Masterpiece Theater series about staying dry at night.

I know it’s no joke to be old. I’m still going to laugh, though.

I don’t think I’d enjoy a life reduced to worrying about peeing. Now that some of us are privileged enough to be under house arrest, we’re learning how to endure a constricted existence and wondering how much we can take. We’re trying to remember why we ever  cared about the things that took up our time and emotional energy.

We’re debating the value of getting dressed in normal clothes versus wearing sweatpants. I’m tired of this discussion because I just wear jeans every day, like every decent person should do. I wear jeans while I watch the news all day, and while I watch Netflix all night.

See my butt-print on the couch? That says it all.

If this ever ends, I hope I remember how to act like a normal, socialized person. Meanwhile, at least I’m not going to shopping malls. I’m saving millions of nollars, right? And I’m keeping track of my regrets.

There are now an increasing number of stances you can take about being forced to stay home. The stances may be infinite for all I know, but let’s review the ones getting the most play.

There’s the Gratitude stance, which I personally find horrifying. This one is popular on Instagram, often with a stupid Buddhist-style image of a sunset and a silhouette of someone doing a yoga pose. It’s a sanctimonious sermon on how this pandemic can teach us to use the planet more gently, how we now have the opportunity to rethink our selfish ways, blah blah blah. It’s an awful slap in the face to anyone who is actually suffering. I refuse to be grateful for a pandemic. Fuck that idea and the horse it rode in on.

Then there’s the Scolding stance, another dreadful position that tries to make you feel bad for spending hours watching Netflix or staring at your phone. This one blames you for losing touch with your Inner Life and your creativity. What’s wrong with you! it gripes, You brainwashed consumer! Have you lost the ability to sit in a room and just be present? Please. As if.

Then there’s the Silver Lining stance. This is the one where you finally have the time to learn a new language, to read War and Peace, to finish that screenplay, to rearrange your living room, try out new recipes and to host zany get-togethers with your girlfriends on Zoom. It’s fun being home with free time! Let’s get busy!

There is also the Existential stance, and that’s the one I’ve chose for now, although it’s more accurate to say it’s chosen me. This is the one where you face down your dread, the continual dread of being alive but close to death. It’s the one where you realize your existence can be reduced to almost nothing, just eating and sleeping with some time-wasting stuff in between. You wonder why you bought all those clothes, all those stupid eye pencils and shoes and trinkets. Life is only about having someone to talk to, to hold you, and a decent bed to crawl into. Life is about waiting for something to happen but hoping it won’t be something awful or unbearable.

However, the last couple of weeks have brought some unexpectedly wonderful moments. I watched Jeopardy for the first time in probably twenty years, and one of the categories was “Otters.” I forgot the question, but it led to the revelation that otters hold hands while they sleep. This is the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard, and sure enough when I googled it, I found loads of pictures. I’m so glad to have discovered this, I can’t overstate the joy it has given me.

Also, in the same episode of Jeopardy, I was able to shout out a few questions before anyone hit the buzzer, a momentous burst of feeling intelligent that I haven’t experienced in ages. It reminded me of my mother, dying of cancer and watching Jeopardy in bed, crying out the word “Loyola!” in a weak but authoritative voice, and being correct.

As time passes, my stance may change. I wonder if I’m the only one who is mentally writing a will? In California, a handwritten will with your signature is legal and binding. I’ve already promised my tiger claw jewelry to my friend Marya and my footwear will go to Simone. Anyone want anything else? Now’s the time to speak up!

Now is the time to be grateful for your friends, even though they won’t come over. If you don’t have friends, now is the time to regret being such a cunt.

Now is the time to refuse to call anything “the new normal.” Nothing is normal any more. Don’t pretend it’s normal and don’t adapt to it if it isn’t.

Now is the time to stop fixating on toilet paper. Think of people in India who never had toilet paper. Think of the girls in third world countries who don’t have sanitary pads or tampons!

Now is the time to stay away from Twitter, where no one can do a single thing without incurring the wrath of a billion lunatics looking for the scapegoat du jour. That way madness lies, or you know, The New Madness.

Now is the time to avoid lists of fun things to do at home. You aren’t at summer camp. You’re under house arrest! Admit it!

Now is the time to be the person you wanted to be, instead of the person you are. Be the better person. Pretend to care about your neighbors and ask them what you can pick up for them when you go out to stand in line for water and Tylenol. Call or text everyone to ask if they need help with anything.

Now is the time to retain your sense of humor! Shit is still funny! I’m trying to prank an entity that invited me to attend a fake Women’s Summit in my city. Keep your fingers crossed that they take my bait!

Now is the time to experiment with make up. No one knows that in real life, you don’t wear blue lipstick. So now you can!

When everything is forbidden, you are free from the old rules!

That’s all I have for now, comrades. Let me know what’s on your minds.

~

*cartoon by Sam Wallman and Miroslav Sandev

Before you go nuts, let me clarify that I’m referring to the old-and-sick. If you’re elderly with “underlying health conditions”, maybe your time is up. Maybe we weren’t meant to live lives extended by pharmaceuticals and pacemakers and stents. The planet can only bear so many people, remember?

I thinks it’s amazing to see normal healthy people hoarding toilet paper and going around wearing masks. If they would read the statistics, they would see how little their actual risk is. Being sick is awful, of course, but a virus that threatens the health of the elderly is not going to fuck you up if you’re outside this group. If you have a compromised immune system, you probably already practice safety measures in your everyday life.

Humans are so tenacious of life, it strikes me as poignant all the time. I have a friend in his 60s who goes around freaking out about an oil refinery a few miles away from his community. He’s afraid it will explode or be targeted by terrorists. I mean, those are real possibilities but what makes him worry about it so continuously? I’ve exclaimed to him more than once, “You really love life, don’t you!”

To constantly be aware of what catastrophes might befall you is to be absent from your immediate experience. How can you drive anywhere when the car coming toward you could smash into you at any moment? When you go to a movie, a fire might break out, or a guy in a batman outfit could burst in with an assault rifle. When you eat a chicken wing or a hotdog, you’re just minutes away from choking to death.

Real threats should be avoided, unless you’re a daredevil. I just read a sobering article in the New Yorker about mountain climbers and the grief their families must learn to process. They know it’s part of the territory but the climbers themselves are driven to test their mortality again and again. I’m not sure if they’re nuts or just wired differently. I wonder if they give a shit about the coronavirus.

There are so many ways I don’t want to die! I don’t want to be eaten by a polar bear. That’s at the top of my list. I don’t want to have my head chopped off or be set on fire. Oh wait, I don’t want to be trampled to death on a pilgrimage to Mecca or after a soccer game. I don’t want to die under a pile of metal shelves in CVS during an earthquake.

The right time to die is when I’m old and sick, in my own bed. That’s the best place for everyone to go, even though in the US, that privilege is only granted to around 17% of us. If the coronavirus wiped out ten per cent of the sick elderly people who become infected, that would leave more room for everyone else. Maybe millennials and Gen Z would be more open to the idea of procreating.

I discussed this with a Gen Xer last night and he was impresses by my “zen attitude.” I like that he didn’t accuse me of speaking from depression. I am depressed but obviously I’m not looking to die on purpose since there are plenty of opportunities for that.

I just see the value of thinning the herd.

What about you scaredy-cats? How much Purel have you got on hand? Or toilet paper?

Photo (c) courtesy of  Dr. LaRue

Recently my brain has come up with a philosophical dilemma that I can’t solve. I know the best solution would be to stop thinking about it. Nevertheless, here it is:

Does the past matter?

By “matter’, I mean does it still have a bearing on the present. Is it still relevant? Are you responsible for your past actions, and do past events have consequences that can’t be dismissed, morally speaking? Can you renounce the past and live in the present without reference or reflection? Does “Now” matter more than yesterday or tomorrow?

If only Now matters, than nothing matters. Because once it’s over, it’s a new Now. And if nothing matters, why go on?

Or, if the past matters, and you have experienced unbearable tragedy or loss, why pretend it’s over and that you can move on? According to Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” 

Going about my daily life, I lack motivation for almost everything, and it’s easy to just decide to go back to bed. Going back to bed isn’t a crime and it’s not fattening. It’s peaceful and comforting. Sometimes, getting up again seems futile but I’m able to take a perverse satisfaction in doing it anyway, just as Camus describes Sisyphus.

Maybe the key for me is to live in the same spirit as Sisyphus. I once told Max that the purpose of life is to withstand irritation. Don’t worry: He was probably nearly thirty and already had his own ideas. Years earlier, he told me he felt like a contraption with its wires exposed. We were talking about the advent of Prozac, and whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to eliminate one’s deep sense of melancholy. What a ridiculous question! If only a drug could do that, without ultimately killing you.

Back to the original dilemma, what are your thoughts? I want to hear them.

*Also, how much would you like to hear Shakespeare done in AAVE? My kingdom for that shit. Seriously. I certainly can’t understand it as written.

Just kidding. 65 is old, very old, a time of Medicare, high cholesterol, and a dread of seeing that your shoes are untied and you have to go ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE to tie them.

Last week on my birthday, I wore my discounted Burberry dress to go out to dinner, vaping my MedMen product before leaving the house. The bridge entrance to Long Beach was closed, so we took a different route that had us driving around lost for a quite a while. Suddenly we made a turn and found we were driving into oncoming traffic. I didn’t see my life rewinding before my eyes but I did feel a frisson of excitement: WE’RE GOING TO DIE! I thought for a moment, and it was okay, because I was strapped into my seat-belt and wearing a nice dress. It would be quick and better than being cut into pieces by a maniac (too much crime TV.)

Anyway, we lived to make a u-turn. Dinner was good. The restaurant had huge screens showing 80s MTV videos, including my favorite Pat Benator song, Love is a Battlefield. She’s a warrior in a tube top and scrunched-down boots, shouting, “We are young!!!!”

Being young is really great. If you’re reading this and you’re young, go out and do everything except opiates, and don’t date guys from the internet who will cut you into pieces and throw them in a ditch so it takes law enforcement seven months to find you.

I hate the commercials I keep seeing with grey-haired old ladies tramping through the hills, bragging about how good they feel and how much they still plan to do. Fuck them.

I really don’t want to do anything, and I’m too old to do it anyway. I do want to finish up my time on earth with less mental suffering. So I keep reading about depression and PTSD, every new study, new treatments, new evidence that your very DNA is a portent of doom. I know that rumination is not helpful but I pretend that what I’m doing is “research.”

But now, my “research” has led me to Metacognitive Therapy. The strategy here is to stop the rumination by interrupting it. Not analyzing why you do it or why you can’t control it. When the thought appears, don’t engage with it. Practice turning your attention elsewhere. Simple as that. Also, add more activities to your daily life, limiting your time to churn worries and self-recrimination.

When you’re caught up in negative rumination, your brain is struggling with itself but it thinks it must continue, like it’s a taking the SAT and isn’t allowed to turn it in, incomplete.

My plan is to listen to more music, read short stories, write more, smoke more weed, find some volunteer work with disabled people, make some bad folk art and keep my hair looking good.

I’m still going to think about death because I like the subject. For example, this story of an 104 year old man who wanted to get it over with is so touching and filled with profound questions and insights. David Goodall seems like a great guy who was more than ready to exit. I love his last words before losing consciousness:

This is taking an awfully long time.

Thoughts, advice, birthday wishes, anyone?

I didn’t believe it when I heard there was a person with only a head, who lived in a bowl. It reminded me of my favorite publication from many years ago, a parody of the National Enquirer that featured a “human Interest” story about a head that lived on a velvet pillow. In the tradition of such stories, the head, a little boy, was brave and spunky and loved sports. He was the ball, obviously.

Anyway, I learned about Rahma Haruna, a Nigerian teenager who lived in a plastic bowl. A photo of her went viral, and someone bought her family a wheelchair to transport the bowl around. Before that, she was carried into the village every day by her younger brother, to beg for alms.

The Girl in a Bowl story is so loaded with meaning and resonance that I hardly know where to begin but here we go.

Last night, a friend came over and we discussed our antidepressants, a first-world problem if ever there was one but nevertheless we struggle. My antidepressant has stopped working and the friend is on a new one, Lexipro. It provides a feeling of numbness, which is good, but it’s fucking with their ability to be creative, and has muted their sense of humor.

In my effort to be helpful, I said, “No, not true! You thought the girl in a bowl was funny and you laughed!” Further, I pointed out, not everyone would respond by laughing. It bespeaks a particular dark and perverse sense of humor, the kind that is natural to people like us, the kind we need to survive.

So my friend agreed. I didn’t go on to quote whoever it was who said that suicide is the failure of the sense of humor. I believe this to be true. It’s not always beneficial to blurt out, though.

Moving along, the Girl in a Bowl Story is an example of courage that is beyond our imagination. Not only that, but Rahma Haruna hoped to one day own a grocery store.

Just think about this. With all my limbs, I know I couldn’t run a grocery store. I can’t even put the groceries away efficiently. I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur, lazy and stupid as I am. I have only dreamed of doing nothing.

Self-worth, courage, dignity, stoicism, hope, faith, perseverance, what else does it take to live in a bowl? In pictures of Rahma, who died in 2016, she wears eye-shadow and sometimes a radiant smile. God bless this girl and her beautiful spirit, even though if there were a god, he’d owe her a huge apology.

I usually hate those quadriplegic people who want to climb Mt. Everest, and I blame them for trying to make the rest of us look bad. But this is not that. This is kind of sui generis, I feel. And it raises the question, can you find humor in tragedy without being a mean person? Is laughing antithetical to compassion? Can you mock something while being humbled by it?

I’m going to say yes, and not just to defend myself and my friend. It doesn’t quite fit here but nonetheless I will quote Oscar Wilde on Dickens. “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”

He was talking about sentimentality but I think this applies to the horror of existence, to bearing up under difficult circumstances. You need to find the humor. For many of us, it is absolutely essential. I hope to suffer like Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde, rather than Sylvia Plath, who had no idea how funny she would look with her legs sticking out of the oven.

But somehow, I’ve ended up making a million doctor appointments, as though I’m a car getting everything checked before a long trip.

Sticking with the car analogy, I don’t even want to leave the garage but I guess I thought I should know what condition I’m in, just in case.

Today I went to the eye doctor, who revealed that I can have cataract surgery, even though I wasn’t aware I had cataracts! What are they, even? All I know is, the surgery would improve my vision so much that I wouldn’t need contact lenses.

That sounds wonderful! Except there must be a downside, like possible blindness?

Who cares! Life has become a game of dodge-ball, and I was never good at that. Cancer, blindness, fragile bones, you try to keep ducking but there they are.

Also, and this is way too much information, for the first time in years I went to a gynecologist, who loved what she saw and said my muscles were too toned! She pressed several different places and asked how each place felt. Some were “Don’t love it”, a couple were “Ow”, one was “Nothing” and others were pretty nice, although I am too classy to say “Keep going!”

Later this week I have an appointment to discuss my shitty bones, and then a regular annual physical.

I feel a weird mixture of dread and elation. Dread of finding out awful things and elation at knowing I don’t care about dying, if only it would hurry up.

If you were ever a smoker, I’ll bet you think if you had six months to live, you would smoke your head off. If you’re concerned about your weight, you probably think you’d go on a wild 6-month eating binge.

Me, I eat cookies all night long, I don’t exercise, I don’t care about my cholesterol, I don’t want anything more than a little dope to smoke and something good to watch on Netflix. I’m ready to die, like Leonard Cohen was before he recanted, but first I have to go to a million doctors.

But here’s the good news: Two different blood pressure tests today at two different offices revealed that it was 150 over 80, and also 114 over 51.

So that’s a relief.

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