Auntie Sandee on the Ass of Death

From “Last Tango in Paris”: “You’re alone…you won’t be able to be free of that feeling of being alone until you look death right in the face…until you go right up into the ass of death…”

Someone told me, “Oh you want a husband!  No, no — you don’t want to die alone!”  The most alone I’ve ever been was when I was with someone;  there was a person who represented an idea that I shouldn’t be alone, yet I was, so it became a mockery, which is even more painful.  Doesn’t matter how compatible to me they were.

You’re going to die alone even if you die with a roomful of people.  You’re born alone.  You die alone, just the same as your experience in this existence is only yours and no one else can fit inside of it and prescribe a course of living for you based on that existence.  Twins are born together.  But are they experiencing the exact same thing together as if they were in one skin?  This last part reminded me of something my sweet Kyle had written a bit back.

But I don’t know — maybe this would be possible in a higher state of consciousness.  So maybe we can die with people.  Maybe our energy can merge and float off into the ether, made up of different chemical compounds of course since the energy transforms, and we go back into the “essence” together.  Scientists say when we die, there is energy that doesn’t, so maybe.  Wouldn’t that be nice? Humans just have a tendency of making pretty metaphors of things — as we speak in colors — consisting of heaven and angels, etc.

It doesn’t matter to me if I die in my room by myself or if there are people surrounding me — I think that would be worse, to be fading away, leaving all of these grieving loved ones behind.  Maybe.

I had the flu many years ago.  I lie on the sofa for three days.  I didn’t have enough strength to open the convertible bed.  I thought, “I’m going to die here,” and it was very matter-of-fact, no fear.  At that time I saw easily how simple it is to die, how easy it would be to just leave.  I had no sentimentality about loved ones, nothing.

No matter whether you die with people or not, being alone is something you have to deal with by yourself.  Having another person, or a body around you all the time isn’t the cure for loneliness.  There’s some space inside yourself that you alone have to deal with.

This had been a building full of widows when I moved here years ago.  I’m sure they all thought their husbands would be around so that they could “die together.”  Ha!

But if you put some butter on it

Under the same standard responsible for punishing Paula Deen, if we asked big business owners, politicians and blue-collar workers — Asian, black, white, Latino, Samoan — if they ever used racial slurs and they told the truth, we’d have no one to run the country, no goods or services, no Honey Nut Cheerios, or computers — the highways would be fucked up from disrepair and there would be no elevator inspectors or pilots.

Paula Deen got caught out there, because let me tell you, she ain’t the onliest one.  I think what happened is an over reaction and that she’s a scapegoat.  When a high-profile white person is branded racist black people think of them as part of the institutions that control our lives negatively.  But we shouldn’t let knee-jerk reactions muddy our thinking.

All I read in the New York Times is that she admitted to using the “N” word years ago, but I didn’t read in any reputable journal anything about her saying she wanted black people dressing up as slaves.  Maybe I missed something and if she did say this then she can kiss my ass and she should be dropped from the Food Network.

I saw this video and frankly I appreciated her honesty in recounting her experience as a southern white woman, even though she makes a crack about the guy being as black as the board.  But how many black people make cracks like that about white people? — stand-up comedians — and that stupid Wayan’s brothers movie, White Girls.  What if two white guys made a movie in black face called Black Girls?  Huh?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/paula-deen-racism_n_3480720.html

I don’t condone quote unquote racism and don’t want to be called the N word, as I’m sure white people would not like to be called the C word.  And we should all play nice blah blah — and try to do better.  But we’re human and xenophobic and white xenophobia is kinda scary, no, yes.

As Wendy Williams said (I watch Wendy Williams — what?!), what we do and say with the blinds closed and curtains drawn at the kitchen table is our business, but in public another story.  It’s ridiculous to think that we’ll ever stop saying mean things about people.  Maybe we’ll get better but I don’t think this behavior will go away completely.

As a public personality, Paula Deen should be held up to a higher standard, especially if she’s getting endorsements from companies supported by the public, but I don’t think that she needs to be lopped off.  In the case that she offended someone with a racial slur, her business should be fined and she should be given a warning, I think.