September 23, 2025

It isn't being dead that bothers me.
It is the dying I would like to avoid.
More specifically, it is the lingering incapacity,
the dwindling, the not-dead-yet-but-maybe-a-little-deader-today-than-yesterday-it's-hard-to-tell that I find to be tedious and unnecessary.

I would like to be surprised, and yet, I like to think that I'm ready to die at any time, prepared, and looking forward to the experience of transition--being there, hoping to not be disappointed with any aspect of my passing.

And, I would like to out-live everyone I have ever known and cared about knowing. To be the one to turn off the lights and shut the door. Wrap things up and go home.

"Home" has a nice ring to it. And fits smoothly with my idea of life being more of a psychic experience than a test, or a burden, or a duty. A "Let's see what we can do with this," kind of thing. A pass-time. A hobby.

I have found seeing things and thinking about them to be quite my thing. Photography and writing are two things I do quite spontaneously, automatically, all of the time, either doing it or thinking about doing it some more again every day. And two things I will most surely miss about being alive. Two things that "life" means for me.

And that leads me to say that life for me is experiential, not intellectual. I do it and think about having done it, as in reflect on having done it more than explain having done it. The only thing I can think to say about life is "Do It! All the way to being dead!" May it be so said of us all!