It was a significant impact; the fisticuffs of a kindergartner, perhaps.
Its chance of survival was slim to none, but I didn't care. I hold a particular disdain for bees having been dominated numerous times while mowing lawns years ago. The attacks even sparked the purchase of an EpiPen. For those unfamiliar with this device, please take a moment to review its instructions:
A few streets later, though, I found myself considering the bee's perspective. That had to have been a horrible way to go.
I mean, he (gender assumption) was probably just wildly pursuing the scent of a hottie she-bee when BAM!
Accordioned into a pale giant's chops.
But, I soon recognized, I'm really just an extension of that bee.
I'm the shrimp cruising on a bicycle amongst gas-guzzling tanks. All it takes is several seconds of lustful reverie over Scarlett Johansson's character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and BAM!
I could collide with an SUV with a vanity plate that ironically reads SOPURDY.
(I have seen this vehicle on Interstate 81.)
As much as we might like to suppress the thought, our existence has the potential to be wickedly fleeting.
And while it's not a necessarily pleasant thing, contemplating death isn't necessarily an unhealthy thing either. It's one of the few guarantees we have.
In his book Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman poses a curious and insightful query:
Which do you fantasize about more: death or having sex?
He says many of his friends overwhelmingly claim the latter, to which he replies:
"Relatively speaking, having sex is so easy. People do it all the time. It's so pedestrian; fantasies about making love are rarely necessary and usually contrived. However, dying is always original."
He later continues:
"I'm constantly thinking about how bullets would burn into my lungs ... or how it will sound if and when I drown. ... I cannot shake the notion of my head being swatted off by a grizzly bear ... There has never been a day in my life when I didn't daydream about having both my collarbones crushed into powder."
Or in my case, how a missile bee - with stinger out - slams on its brakes too late, pierces my eyeball, sending me into anaphylactic shock, only to have my EpiPen fail, and I croak due to asphyxiation.
"In all likelihood, you don't think about dying enough," Klosterman concludes.
But really, Michael Jackson is (sort of) the core of this post.
He recently Beat It for good, and I doubt many people would have called that one. It's actually a NY Times article about the "controversy" over his burial that has my thoughts six feet under.
White Glove wanted to be buried at Neverland Ranch, but there are supposedly issues with permits and family members in disagreements.
The author then suggested, "We should consider but not be bound by the desires of the dead. They are beyond caring what befalls them. Our greater duty is to the living for whom these remains have profound meaning."
Ballsy, I first thought. They are dead and along with them their respect.
But then I was taken back to thoughts I had this past fall while traveling Europe. This doesn't lead me to say I agree with the article's author, but I loosely get it (in a very tangential way).
We visited several cemeteries designed by well-known architects. I was particularly moved while wandering through the seemingly endless San Cataldo in Modena, Italy. Originally established in the nineteenth century, the cemetery sponsored an addition by Aldo Rossi in the early 1970s.
He described it as a "city of the dead":
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalevkevad/3416924475/It's just so much volume; static space activated very sparingly by guests. The intense hallway perspectives - lined with engraved plaques, long-expired candles and artificial flowers - felt strangely like craft aisles in Michaels. It was sad to imagine how long it's been since some of the deceased had been visited.
"That's my third in three years. I'm batting .002!"
Regardless, it's like the monolith architecture is somehow a massive symbol of separation anxiety.
Human life is transient, but mausoleums (and expansive burial lawns) can make it always-tangible? The afterlife is infinite, but so is the duration of our emblems?
Hm.
I know people find solace in different ways. Some might need a headstone to caress or a security deposit box to visit, but it doesn't quite make sense to me.
People will continually die. Lots and lots of them. I find it difficult to imagine the extent of land clearing and building that will emerge in years to come as another one bites the dust. And another. And another.
Sucks for the superstitious. You might have to hold your breath as you drive just a little too long.
And another.
Flip: death can also be very positive.
Have you ever read the obituaries in the NY Times? If not, I highly encourage it. I typically find it quite uplifting. Check out this cowboy.
Joe Bowman could place tape over a metal washer, toss it in the air, fire his pistol, and shoot straight through the hole.
I read this after I played basketball outside by myself Tuesday, failing to make five consecutive free throws for approximately 30 minutes (OK, 40).
Dude can split a playing card edgewise, and I can't toss a large sphere into an even larger sphere just 13 feet away.
But I said uplifting, right? Right.
This isn't meant to be self-deprecating. I think it's cool to read about unique people, whether they're brilliant or just peculiar. And it's evidence that everyone can have a niche, however remarkable or "unimportant" it might be.
Bowman made a living playing guns.
In 1992, he said, "So much of what I do is for the adults, reminding them of their childhood ..."
In that case, where's my Barrel of Monkeys?
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