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!

Unguent for the tortured soul

I left Mean-Spirited Tales at this book store where I want to have a reading, because the associate said the owner needs to look through my book first.  “Call in a week,” he said.

It’s weeks past the time he said to call.  So I’m sure the owner has read the entire book by now and is waiting anxiously for my call.  I’ll bet she’s all like, “Gosh, when’s Sandee calling?  We need her!  This Mean-Spirited Tales, it’s unguent, for the tortured soul…”

Of course it’s unguent — it has sadism, a beheading, alcoholics, liver pâté, the devil, an angel and some cats.

Do you know how many souls I’ve healed with my book?  It frightens me to think of it.

My other reading was at the Indian Road Cafe.  Patrons were there eating and talking.  Good thing I invited lots of people and screamed the stories to drown the patrons out.  After while I couldn’t hear any patrons.  Or maybe they were just fascinated by my hypnotic story-telling skill – yes, that’s it.  No wait – they were captivated by the creature horns on my head, by my piercing glare.

The Indian Road Café is a nice atmosphere and the food is great, but the book store has a podium!  I’ve always wanted to pontificate behind a podium.  No horns needed to draw attention to my flapping maw – I’ll be the center of everyone’s eye, standing tall.

I need to end this bookstore owner’s anticipation for my call though.  I’ll hurry and call and schedule the date for my reading, that way she can celebrate it over the weekend.  Who says Aunt Sandee isn’t altruistic.

 

 

No mama, I don’t want to go to hell!

Does anyone know if I could have unwittingly made a pact with the devil by singing a snippet of a refrain in a death metal song produced by Satanists?  I just wondered.

Quite a few years back I bought albums by Deicide and Morbid Angel.  A few years later, I was influenced by what people said about vibrations and such, bad ones, so I got superstitious and threw them away.  And silly me I didn’t know they were Satanists.

On my Pandora radio station the few songs they play by Satanists I really like.  Without me knowing who the artists are at first — if I hear the song from another room, I’m thinking wow that song’s tight!  And it turns out to be devil worshippers.  I guess that’s the way the devil works — his shit is always tight.  For those who don’t know, he’s all about appearances and the corporeal.

I’m not a devil worshipper.  I happen to have an unconventional relationship with God–it’s personal.  I’m an observer of life and all its elements.  I like to face them.  When I was nine I wrote a story examining the mystery of death and God and Satan.  This is just me.

They had this monk in Italy who sang metal.  He was old as shit too.  Reminded me of me.

So I don’t like the devil.  I just hoped I didn’t make an unwitting pact because I sang to this Deicide song that has a very infectious chorus.  I’ll bet most people would have a hard time not singing this one.  The chorus sounds like little demons waving their hands to and fro in the air while singing.  It’s so cute.  I used to do my leg lifts to it before I threw it out.  But it comes on my Pandora from time to time.  I still sing the chorus though.  I guess I realize in the back of my mind that if I had made a pact with the devil, my life would be a hell of a lot better than this.  Doesn’t the devil give you everything you want?  Hahaha!

The Bum Couple of Inwood Farms

*My friend calls this neighborhood Inwood Farms – hilarious.

The bum couple in my neighborhood think they’re the neighborhood’s honorary bums.  People coming home from work stop to have forty-five minute conversations with them.  During these conversations they pause to wave or to say hi to people.

I think people talk to them for a cheap show of magnanimity.  Look at me everybody. I don’t have problems talking to bums.  I talk to Frank the bum but never this long.  I dare these people to invite Mr. and Mrs. Bum to their homes.

The man said hello to me once because I made eye contact.  It irritated me.  He looked wounded when I didn’t continue to speak to him or his wife.  I think they silently scolded me with their little puppy dog homeless faces.  Nothing against bums – I love Frank, and the other bums are cool.  Hell I might just be a bum myself at the rate things are going in this country.

For a long time they lived in the 207^th Street subway station.  Transit workers played chess with the husband by the elevator.  People stood around watching.  I love chess.  I played naked chess with my computer, listened to death metal and ate olive oil toast every night before blogging.  But never would I play chess with that bum.  Number A:  on the subway station benches he had biblical placards.  And Number B:  one said Halloween was the devil’s holiday.  So you take up space in the subway station, proselytize AND put down my favorite holiday.

They live on the benches by the park now.  The husband plays chess on the park wall.  Sometimes there are two or three games going at once.  You’ll find the wife waddling back home sweet home with a cart full of groceries during the games – maybe she’s got hors doeurves and crudite in there for the boys.

Sometimes when it rains they’re hidden behind rain slickers, garbage bags and two gigantic umbrellas.  If you didn’t see two pairs of feet underneath you might think there was just a heap of crap on the bench.  They must get along really well to be able to sit so close.

But I’ll bet that husband could show me some mean chess moves.  He reminds me of a guy I was infatuated with who also played chess.  He and his wife are tall and heavy.  This guy was too, with a deep voice and big feet.  I joked that the bum couple reminded me of me and this guy.  He was in financial trouble and I had taken this job making half the money I used to make.  I had some strain myself.  So we’d be together – broke.

I said to someone, “I think I hate them because I’m afraid I’ll become them.”  But no, I just don’t like them.  Sue me for not liking a downtrodden married bum couple.  It’s far more evil to use bums to demonstrate your bullshit magnanimity.

Oh my what to do…

HIM?    HIM? 

SATAN?

Vacillating between ‘What would Jesus do?’ and ‘What would Machiavelli do?’ — it’s exhausting!  I guess I’m not that crazy.  Trying to summon my inner-psychotic wasn’t easy.

Do I stay friendly with the office bully because I need him in my pocket to scare lesser menaces?  Should I have agape love, dredging up the understanding that this is a poor soul, who needs compassion for the pain causing them to be like this?  What do y’all think?  What would you do?  What would the devil do?  Something really awful probably right?  But I don’t want to go to jail.

Love,

Sandee