King Paranoia In Heaven

Paranoia

Part 7 of 30

Here’s a truth you should know, definitely worth the price of admission, zero. It’s biggest value is there’s nothing in it that anyone should dispute. But I fear some of you will and so go on your merry way to a well-deserved destruction. Got your attention? The truth is, It’s not love that makes the world go ‘round, it’s paranoia. Which you come to love, since however things are is what we should love. If we don’t love reality -- as bleak and hopeless as it appears -- we’ve lost the way.

I’ve been seriously pondering -- occasionally splashing my drink from nervousness -- whether to unleash the hounds of this knowledge. Because the whole truth is usually kept from us, mercifully, mostly for our own good, and in large part because it’s frowned upon to watch helpless morons colliding into each other, messing up their hopes and existence and reaping folly. Is it the great tragedy that we think of when that happens? Probably at some level, yes, but the basic gist of it is, it doesn't matter; existence always resets and is back on track with us or without us.

Sometimes I walk through the cemetery up the hill and wonder about the lives at my feet. Were they really anything at all, like this guy over here -- sentimental picture of him encased on the stone? I'd guess like all of us. Paranoid cogs in the machine. Then there’s the others, the vast majority, where vandals have smashed their pictures to smithereens, a terrible thing to see. Or is it? Maybe in the vast hereafter, once they've received their wings they've flitted to their eternal reward and it doesn't matter. Or, it could be, they’re saying, “I totally missed the truth, went in for counseling for paranoia when I should’ve seen it as my inspiration. I became a boring simpleton when I could've gone hog-wild and at least had a story to tell.” So they make the sign of the cross from their perch in heaven, a blessing upon anyone who would so graciously -- but without apparent wisdom -- destroy their picture.

All right, paranoia makes the world go ‘round, we all agree. But who’s in charge of seeing to it that it gets done? That’s one of my biggest complaints about co-workers and slipshod supervision; let’s cut the crap and get things done! In these matters, it’s King Paranoia, and whomever the queen for the day is, because King Paranoia totally suspects her of cheating with other anthropomorphic concepts.

King Paranoia sees those with the promise to fill the many important sectors of existence. And before you know it, you -- all us lowly peons -- are in a slot of society: farming, manufacturing, science, holding down the fort, screwing up, and the list goes on. Maybe you’re a list-maker, no one could be more paranoid, being a completist, but always a hopeless failure. I'm giving it my all and usually see when paranoia is about to trap me into spending the whole day on something. The best weapon against paranoia, then, are ellipses, you’re just saying … “Let someone else do the grunt work. There’s a whole sector out there for me to worry and fret over.” King Paranoia sees our good deeds and says, “At last, someone I can use!”

A Mosquito Tent O'er My Grave

NOTE: The following is an imaginary scenario, assuming that I will buried in a grave after my decease, and that I have a wife, children, and loved ones.

Who likes mosquitoes? I don’t. They’re the bane of summer. They prove the point I've believed from childhood, that there’s nothing in nature completely good. Summer looks like it'd be fantastic, known for warm temperatures, beautiful weather, and summer vacation. Then come mosquitoes! Along with their cousin bugs, ticks and the entire sad messy disgusting crew, evolution's Trump-like jab at existence.

I have a mosquito tent. But I hardly ever put it up. One, I’m not that tempted to be out in the summer. Two, they’ll bite me while I’m putting it up. The only good way to do it would be to put it up in the garage and walk it out to the yard, but by the time I got there the wind would kick up and blow both me and it away.

Still, whatever inconvenience I face has to do with me being alive and present in the world. I firmly believe that I didn’t face any of these issues before I was born, which was billions of years. It follows then that I won’t face them when I’m gone, regardless of how long that will be. Still, it’d be at least symbolically a good thing — forever preaching my doctrine to the world that mosquitoes suck — if I had a mosquito tent o’er my grave.

OK, let me make a few keystrokes on my Last Will and Testament.doc and it’s done! It’s now in my will, which is inviolate. No matter how inconvenient anything is — burdensome, uncomfortable, or outlandish — the heirs have to do it. Enter my two sons and daughter. Along with the wife, if I should predecease her. And the way she raises that rolling pin when I’m the slightest bit late after a pleasant evening at Joe’s Place tipping back a few cold ones, then getting home before the mosquitoes are thick, she might truly outlive me.

The big day comes. I croak. Now the fun begins. They argue, they fight. “We have to get a mosquito tent for Dummy's grave?! But only in the summer. Which, knowing him, means strictly the first day of summer and not to exceed the last.” Yes, along with other complications. It needs to be o’er my grave, which can be tricky, since no one’s there to guard it. Kids are always stealing stuff on graves, or messing with it in some way. My estate might need to buy several tents in a season, which could get pricey.

Then there’s the optics. The cemetery board will obviously have a problem if it’s blowing across the field, or not staked down properly, or not secured from the other elements. The last thing the board wants is an eyesore. Which I get. A cemetery is a place of solemn dignity, remembering everyone from town. There’s some guys out there I remember as a kid. Guys who dug sewers, ran gas stations, sat in lawn chairs across the road, and others. All good memories. If they were to speak up and say “We knew that kid would grow up to be a nuisance. Now he has a tent encroaching on our mound," that'd make me feel bad.

Anyway, the kids and wife will have to really devote themselves to the task! Like in the old song, “See That My Grave’s Kept Clean and My Mosquito Tent's Presentable.” So there it is. But then indeed it does blow around a few times. The board complains. The family tries to comply. But the wife dies, the kids have other problems. The board relents, the wind after all is an act of God. Then the family argues, “You were supposed to do it!” "No, no, it was your year to handle it!" Suddenly the kids aren't speaking to one another. And no one’s watching out for anything. Then the kids are on the road, get hit, and now graves are popping up all around me.

Finally, the groundskeeper takes it upon himself — and he’s not reprimanded in any way, in fact applauded — to haul my ratty mosquito tent to the dump. My grave is now unprotected and ignored. The Lord returns. I’m resurrected. It just happens to be June 21, at which point my spiritual body is immediately attacked by resentful hungry mosquitoes. With me itching through the entire last thousand years judgment. Sad ending, but every word true.

A Dead Guy's Mustache -- As Close As You're Gonna Get

 CLICK PHOTO TO GET AS CLOSE AS YOU'RE GONNA GET

This guy lived and died a long time ago, maybe 100 years ago.

There's lots of maybes. Since he was a young guy in this photo, he might have lived quite a while after this, with his mustache turning old and gray and eventually falling off. Or he might have sat for this picture, caught viral pneumonia from a sick photographer and fallen dead just moments after the shutter clicked.

Either way, he's certainly dead now, and his mustache presumably is lost forever. Exhuming the body is out, not only because of the various legalities that would have to be dealt with, but because we have no idea, no clue as to his identity. The only information I've been able to glean is that he lived, had a great head of hair and mustache, and died. And that he sat for at least one photo at a photography studio called Veatch in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Cedar Falls, Iowa? Now we're making progress! Which is probably still a dead end. Of course, if you want to go for it, be my guest. I am personally going to stand down and let the poor man rest in peace. And accept it that his mustache is gone forever, and that this enlargement is as close as I'm gonna get.

Still, isn't it a tantalizing detail that ... somewhere near Cedar Falls, Iowa, in a lonely, perhaps forgotten cemetery, this mustache still rules and reigns the nether realms six feet under? For me, it changes nothing. I'm still standing down!

So barring a miracle, an identification and the knocking down of many legal barriers to exhumation, I'm as close as I'm gonna get to this great example of a flamboyant mustache.

Isn't life amazing? We try to deny it, but life always comes with limits. You see a guy with a mustache, and he passes by, usually without allowing us a super close-up. Of course the inaccessibility is greatly multiplied for guys who lived and died a hundred years ago. But thanks to photography -- a relatively recent invention -- we're able to see it in all its glory.

So today -- and today only -- you and I have this rare opportunity, a treat, the chance to zero in on this particular guy's cool mustache. Friends, feast your eyes! This is as close as anyone's gotten since he passed from this earth. And it's a chance that likely will never come again.

A Log For My Grave

I visited the dearly departed yesterday. I had a few minutes to kill and decided to get out to the cemetery and see how things were hanging.

Every trip to this field of stones seems to have its own character, of course depending on what mood I show up with. Yesterday, I was in a solemn mood, for whatever reason, maybe guilt for having given them such a poor Memorial Day.

I focused in, like always, on the situation at hand ... Death is certain and final. But right there, only a few feet beneath the ground, are the earthly remains of whoever. Dad, old friends, old neighbors, and strangers. Some are the pioneers. The pioneers, just guessing, are now little more than dust. Maybe a few buttons, no zippers, the zipper being a relatively recent invention. Named because of its zipping noise.

The pioneers had it rough, I believe, very rough, depending on which wave they came in on. If they got there three weeks late, the true pioneers said, "Yeah, glom on to our coattails!" Giving them a complex, finding themselves between being a pioneer and a wannabe. Although probably they weren't thinking so much of being a pioneer, more thinking about just living their normal life, like I was yesterday. Certainly now it's all relative. If they lived anytime before 1900 they're a pioneer, whether they were or not.

Wandering the grounds there ... naturally I dashed from tree to tree, hoping some passing motorist would think he saw a spirit ... I kept it all respectful, as one should. If I saw someone's stone I knew, I paused and thought of them. A lot of my memories are very indistinct. I can't always recall mentally just what everyone looked like, but I believe I'd recognize them were I to see them again. One stone was for a kid I knew when I was a kid. We played together, and knew each other well, of course. He died within the last 10 years in a vehicle fire, all grown up. According to his stone, he had five kids. Which was a surprise to me, since the last time I remember seeing him we were teenagers.

The great thing about being in the cemetery, and dead, is that you're completely removed from everything happening here. No more worries about your truck, your bills, and what tomorrow brings. No one's expecting you to care. You've stepped beyond everything, up into the sainted, exalted regions, and that's all there is to it.

In the case of my old friend, being in a vehicle fire, that was entirely unexpected. So he's got one of the plaques about "No farewell words were spoken, No time to say goodbye..." That's a killer, because you know they meant it. Whereas, had he been on his deathbed, lingering, at least everyone could come in and offer up a final word. "Sorry you're sick ... get well soon."

My experience, though, on that count, is that the final words aren't always worth it. Because the person (and you) don't want to face the obvious facts directly. As for me, it'd be refreshing -- let's say I linger in my final throes -- to have people step up and say something along the lines of, "So you're dying. How does that feel?" Then, depending how it does feel, I'd tell them. It feels like crap, it feels great, it feels sad, it feels happy.

I imagine myself saying, "Tell me farewell, dear one, then go back and live your life, and let me have these last few minutes to myself." Because it's like my old olfactory hallucinations. It's a sensation only I can experience, and I'd like these last few minutes alone to train my attention on the anahata chakra and the rest, because I believe the brain-mind-heart is about to testify loudly to me that it was (and ever shall be) integral with the highest reality, and that complete Oneness was never a razor's edge away. "Tell everyone goodbye for me." Instead, of course, people want to tell you you're going to pull through.

Saintly, aren't I? Yes, I certainly am. I'm such a saint, they ought to put that on my stone. SAINTLY. 'Among the people I knew, he was the saintliest that I ever knew of those who walked the earth.' I guess that's one of the thoughts I had strolling among the stones, how saintly everyone appears, with the tokens of remembrance left, the inscriptions inscribed, and the many references to God. 

My thought on all this getting up this morning was how much cooler it'd be, instead of a stone, just to have a big log on your grave. The log would just be there, OK... How long does a log last? 50 years? I bet a log would last longer than that, even untreated. Anyway, however long it lasts, 50-100 years, that's all it's going to take for everyone who knew me to also pass away. Then 100-125 years, my log is just withered to dust. Most of it blew away from the strong winds we periodically get. Pieces get scattered in the dust, up against the fence, bugs carry it off. They're in and out everywhere you look.

Finally, a bug carries off the last scrap of my log, a tiny little piece that everyone else has overlooked. And there I am. I'm dead, my earthly remains (cremains) unseen, the grave clear of everything. Just clear, flat. Now every time the wind blows, it's unimpeded. No more log to slow it down. And at last I'm one with the pioneers.

This Halloween You Die!

'Tis the season of monsters, ghouls, evil witches, and zombies. Halloween is once again upon us. They all want to be scared. Well, I've got a prophecy for you, and a very reliable at that ... this year everyone's going to have something to be genuinely scared about. Mark my words!

We used to walk through the graveyard and always think how cool it'd be if it really opened up and ghosts were chasing everyone around. We always thought that's the kind of world we need to live in. Every year we'd lose X number of people to the ghosts. The authorities would try to forbid Halloween, of course, through their constant misguided desire for "public safety," but naturally we'd rebel and go out.

What a wild night it'd be! That was our fantasy. To be in actual spooky danger and not just the tiresome danger we normally get, from neighborhood psychos, depressed mass murderers, etc. No one thinks that's any fun, for whatever reason. We wanted ghosts, monsters, real ghouls.

To have actual supernatural phenomena, that's different. We can't fight them on equal footing. They've got powers beyond our own, the ability to recompose decomposed bodies, to become invisible, and to throw fire, etc. They rise up, maybe with a mouth ten inches tall and very narrow. They're melting before our eyes. They're embedded in someone and clawing their way out of someone's stomach. There's no end to the danger.

OK, here's my bold  prophecy: This is the year it happens! This year the lid of hell is coming off!

Mark it and mark it well, heed it! It's happening this year! It's starting this year! Halloween will be a terrific mess all over the world. Children, teenagers, and adults who've never grown up will not be coming home! Big steam pits will open under their feet! The dead will rise this year, on Halloween! Monsters will roam the land. There will be all kinds of misty fog over cemeteries, even in places whether there isn't the slightest humidity. Spirits will materialize and drag the living to their demise.

Halloween -- starting this year -- is going to be as terrible as anything we've ever heard of. The fires of hell will erupt, and the devil himself will be flying over our cities. I've already seen it in vision. And as for the monsters, just to elaborate, there won't be anything to stop them. And this includes some of the classic Universal monsters -- Dracula, Frankenstein, the Bride of Frankenstein, and others -- they will literally be out in force.

The terrible thing about all this is that no one will likely heed my warning. I expect people to think Halloween is going to be the usual bit of "fun" that it always is. Going for a bunch of candy, like always, even though it leads to diabetes. We still look at it as harmless.

How terrible, that you will not listen. Those who invoke the spirits will be destroyed. Please, please, stay home, and keep your doors bolted.

If there's any good in Halloween at all -- and it's small -- it's this, that the ones consumed this year -- our children, our loved ones -- will reappear next Halloween. We the living, those left behind, those missing them, will be able to catch one more glimpse of our loved ones, just before they attack us and drag us, as well, to a hideous death.

Cadaver Dogs Need To Get Our Attention

"It's over there! The cadaver!" he might say. "You're looking for a dead body, I've scented one!" would be another direct alternative. Or even, "I smell something in yonder box, you might want to check it out," would probably be enough, although he's not explicitly mentioning cadavers or dead bodies.

All those would be useful explanations, but, alas, dogs can't talk. They can only motion (the Pointer), make noise (the Whistling Dachshund), or bite your leg off (the Pit-bull). If they're some other dog, they have to make do with the assumption that you who are searching for the body will recognize it when they've found one.

But this doesn't always happen if the body isn't really lost. In those cases, they have a few different choices: 1) Dance around and tug at you; 2) Claw at the casket, or the deceased if he's not yet in a box; or, 3) Ignore its discovery. But I can't see a cadaver dog having the decision-making capabilities to simply ignore the body. Because of their training, anytime you get them around a dead body, they're going to let you know!

Our best recommendation for cadaver dog owners would be to leave your dog home if you're going to a funeral and don't want to be bothered with all the antics. Because it can be embarrassing to disrupt someone's funeral by having to lecture your dog in public. Especially right there at the grave site, with the pastor having to start over several times with his final remarks. "If anyone has just cause why the deceased should not be buried, let him speak now or forever hold his piece." Then an embarrassing "Howl!"

The whole story is this: A cadaver dog, as macabre as it may sound, can be very useful if you're trying to find a missing body. But they're not helpful at all if the body's location is well known and not a mystery at all.

Time Is For Wasting

It's Memorial Day, a time for wasting. All time is time for wasting.

When we honor the dead, we're honoring time that was wasted. Their ashes, bones, remains have wasted away.

The old philosopher -- O, what's his name? -- Eddie Lawrence -- asks, "Is that what your problem is, Booby?" You got a problem? You have a problem with decorating graves? Yes, it's a waste.

Who likes to go by a graveyard and see plastic flowers and little windmills wasting good wind? I don't. Nor do I like all the trinkets, leftovers, memorials, signs with sentiments, the windmills, balloons, stemmed flowers, iron hanging posts. None of it.

I'd rather have a nice clean grave. Marked out like that, a rectangle with fading edges giving way to obscurity. Perhaps nothing at all would be better.

Anytime I try to remember dead loved ones, it doesn't help to be at their grave. And I definitely have tried. Although it is somewhat cool, once in a while, to say, "There, right there."