The Reincarnation of Edgar Allan Poe

I took a Facebook personality quiz the other day and found out something interesting: I was Edgar Allan Poe in a previous lifetime! My biggest quandary at this point is I've seen several of my friends who were also Poe. I say it's a quandary, but it's probably just a glitch, because it's more likely I'm Poe than any of them. The other choices were Mozart, Darwin, Lincoln, and Jimmy Durante.

According to the quiz, I'm Poe because I tend to be moody, solitary, inner-directed, and decisive. It definitely puts a good spin on my personality; I haven't been much at parties, but now I'll be able to say I'm a famous dead author, a great icebreaker.

One big problem for me in judging all this is I don't know that much about Poe. I do have "my" complete works on the shelf, so that's a start. I've looked through them a few times, then wonder why; they don't look that interesting. Now I know why, because I wrote it all! However, of all the stories in the world "The Tell-Tale Heart" was my favorite story as a kid. I read it in school maybe five, six times. The other stuff, not so much.

I remember one Halloween, they gave us a great treat. We went to a dark room at school and watched "The Raven" from a 16mm projector. That was great fun. The color was really good, and you get a good vibe when you actually hear the projector clacking away. Whatever scary parts there were, kids were making scary noises and laughing, all great fun.

I never actually read "The Raven," though, till I was an adult. So I wasn't familiar with one of my greatest poems till way past childhood. Depriving myself, obviously, since it truly is very creepy. And because they mention it on Jeopardy about 10 times a month, always on the Teen Tournament.

A couple years ago I read a book that tied me in somehow with a murder in New York. My memory never being that good, I can't remember what it was all about. A young woman had gone to an abortion provider, who was another woman in a house, then crossed over the river, and was found dead in New Jersey. Somehow I, Edgar Allan Poe, was connected with that. I wrote a story based on it, changing the names. It's in my Collected Works.

One of the things I'm very proud of is that the Beatles mentioned me in one of their songs, "I Am the Walrus," and that I'm pictured on the Sgt. Pepper album, my big blockhead and huge forehead making me stand out in quite a stark, wonderful way.

Now that I'm back -- or now that I realize I'm me -- it might be worth a little effort to see if I can get some back royalties. I know what everyone's objection will be, the supposed fact that since I'm dead all these years the works have passed into the public domain. Except -- my retort is obvious -- how does that apply if I'm manifestly not dead? Gotcha there. The quiz doesn't lie, and now that I think of it I'm getting back some of memories. A couple biographies from the library and I'll be my old self again.

I'll start with Wikipedia. I was born about a month before Abraham Lincoln, coincidentally one of my current Facebook friends who took the quiz. I died at the ancient age of 40. I'm best known for my tales of mystery and the macabre. I had a financially difficult life and career.

I attended the University of Virginia for one semester, failing all my classes except Creative Writing, in which I excelled. In 1835, I married my 13-year-old cousin. Our first son is presently reincarnated as Jerry Lee Lewis. I died in Baltimore, the cause of my death being variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents. Obviously I had a hard time avoiding trouble, including the difficulty of getting life insurance.

Please, everyone, help make my life and career better in this present incarnation. Read the Grandma Slump blog faithfully -- I haven't lost my great talent. Send money. And any advice you may have on how to stay well. For any illness or condition, since I've had them all. Whatever goes around, I catch, so I need your help. Just pray it's not Ebola.

Tiny Came Back As A Toilet Brush

I'm crediting this post to the influence of an adult education class I took at the community college a few months ago. Otherwise, I doubt I would've ever thought of it. I actually wasn't thinking about it ... it came like one of those flashes; you know how the brain works, no rhyme or reason to anything.

The class wasn't any big deal, nothing special. Probably everyone's taken it at some point. Certainly it's common enough, your everyday garden variety class on "Past Lives -- Intuitive Evolution." But it was sort of fun, a pleasant enough way to waste some time in the winter months. I just didn't think much about it after.

The funny thing about the class was how often everyone came to the "discovery" that they were famous people in their past lives. I think we had three different William the Conquerors, out of about 25 people! A couple U.S. presidents were in attendance, and of course Einstein. The rest of us were a little more reserved. If we thought we were famous years ago, we kept it to ourselves. My own thoughts about me, I'm sure I was a peasant, and in my non-human lives I can remember being a mollusk. Seriously. I picked up a dried empty shell by the lake the other day and once upon a time I think I knew the guy.

Anyway, today the class came to my mind when I had to do some spot cleaning on the toilet -- you probably know what I mean -- and I felt some intuitive sensations in the handle of the brush. Sounds crazy, I know, but a flash came to me, which was from the "intuitive evolutionary" part of the class. The flash, then a dawning awareness, then an absolute certainty, was the freaky knowledge that my toilet brush is the present life-form incarnation of a guy I used to know in high school. He came back as a toilet brush! Believe me, I know how it sounds, but if it weren't true, why would I have thought of it?

I held the brush, trembling -- having used it first -- and this guy's image came into my mind as clear as anything. And it's not even a guy I knew that well. I don't even remember his real name, just his nickname, which was Tiny. He was one of those big guys who got the ironic name of Tiny. Like Big Tiny Little, the barroom, honky-tonk piano player who used to record for Decca Records.

And it makes a certain amount of sense, the whole thing of him now existing as my toilet brush, because Tiny was a scourge toward me. How fitting it is that his karma would be such that he would reincarnate and devolve to a basic non-living (it appears) household implement for me to use. And, please, before you write in, don't blame me ... he brought it on himself.

I hadn't actually even heard that he died, because like I said, I don't even remember his name ... it might have been Don, or Clint, or Kenny, something like that. No, there was a different guy named Kenny who hated my guts. I haven't run across Kenny's soul yet. He's probably still living. I'd Google him but I'd have to destroy my computer if I found him. He was another scourge, much worse.

Tiny wasn't as bad as Kenny, but still he was bad enough. We were only in one class together, and there must have been plenty of time for talking among ourselves, because I remember him always being on me for some reason. This is embarrassing to say, in a way, because Tiny had a thing about masturbation ... know what I mean? He mentioned it all the time.

He was a huge guy, so that probably had something to do with it. He used to accuse me of various things and ply me for information on masturbation. What I'm saying, I hope you realize, is 100% true. Beyond that, he insulted me in various ways, probably because I actually was small and his name of Tiny had something to do with him being such a behemoth. He definitely saw me as a victim ... which I obviously was. I didn't have the confidence -- or sufficient knowledge on projection and karma, etc.  -- to be able to tell him, "Yeah, but someday you'll be a toilet brush and I'll still be a man." If only I'd known!

So there I was, this morning, with Tiny in my hand! I thought, Oh my God! I've used him a hundred times and didn't know it was him! But today was so completely different. I had the intuitive flash. I realized it was him ... and my reaction was something like this: I felt weird about it, the terrible conditions Tiny's been living in all this time...

You know how it is with toilet brushes. They have a holder. You use it and stick it in the holder, which always has about a quarter inch of water from previous days. I look down at that holder every time and think I should clean it. But then I don't, because what's the use? ...  it's only going to get wet again. Plus, it'd mean having to touch it, then having to wash my hands for 20 minutes. Still, it's like a little cesspool of germs, down among the rest of the muck, the occasional pubic hair, etc., very disgusting. This is where a guy should have maid service.

OK, how do you think I treated the toilet brush once the flash came to me that it was Tiny back from the dead? Did I use him with malice? Did I put him through the paces? Did I slam him back into the holder with the water? No, I didn't do any of that. I used it as normal, then put it back in its place as normal. One, I don't want to break it and have to waste money for a new one; I might get someone I don't even know. But, two, I am a merciful person. Mercy is my Number One rule. If they ever build a monastery in my memory, mercy will be their basic thing.

At this point, I don't really have any living enmity toward Tiny. Even though he was older than me at the time, I think two grades ahead, he was still just a kid. He had to be around 18. His brain hadn't really entirely formed ... and I don't know that it ever did. He was a bully, yes, but maybe he had troubles at home. And as far as his own self image, being huge and being called Tiny, then whacking off and having to torture other kids out of his guilt, let's say, the whole projection thing, he had more problems than he knew what to do with.

So, no, I haven't got it in for Tiny. And as far as his return, his devolution, his reincarnation as a lowly toilet brush, I did not consciously have anything to do with that. How soul entities are reincarnated, divvied out, is clearly not my department.