The AFTERLIFE (1)

THE AFTERLIFE (1) (inspired by SUM: Forty tales from the afterlives by David Eagleman) WHEN you arrive at a black wrought iron gate after you have died and see the electronic notice: WELCOME TO THE AFTERLIFE, pretty soon you will be asked to select your afterlife option. Without thinking about it too much, you might choose ‘REPEAT’, which is in fact an opportunity to do everything all over again. The good, you think, outweighed the bad, so it seems like a pretty good option. What you soon discover, however, is that everything is in clumps. It is not linear, as you lived it. First up is birthdays. I have all of my 81 birthdays over 81 days. My fingers get sore from opening too many presents. The one that brings the biggest smile is the bike, when I was 13. A red and blue Malvern Star. Subsequent birthdays were an anti-climax present-wise. But when I get to 36 again, I get to revisit the Café Royal, in London on Regent Street. DH Lawrence’s birthday experience at the same venue was at a similar age around the mid 1920’s. He ended up vomiting everywhere, in the Domino Room. A more mundane experience is sixty accumulative weeks of continual teeth cleaning. Sometimes your mouth drips with blood. You watch your teeth slowly changing shape and becoming irregular, and stained. Hair brushing is also mundane. This only goes for 45 years and then stops. Not even a comb is needed after that. Football match after football match, eight months of it, more triumph than despair, the blue and white stripes the common denominator. After a while the sirens hurt your ears. A cumulative thirty years of sleep, sometimes restlessly. There are some classic dreams- especially numerous are the car crashes built around anxiety you often had. These are also bunched together- a bunching in amongst the bunching. Thank God when they finish and are replaced by 2000 or more erotic ones. Staring blankly at walls takes up close to a year. Your feelings of emotional anguish- that terrible adolescent break-up that caused stomach pain. Boredom, ennui, broken bones or mere sprains and head knocks. These are the moments that you suffer the most in reliving. Cutting finger and toe nails takes up 3 days. You never did do that kind of thing much. Pulling out ear wax and picking your nose takes up triple the time of this. As for shaving, 300 days, and doing dishes (shamefully) 130, all painfully boring but better than gardening- 270- and cleaning the toilet- 190. Month upon month is spent driving various cars, the majority of it in the same one or two suburbs. Several of these months waiting restlessly before a red light. Only a week on a plane, but what a jam- packed week of excitement and anticipation. Ironing, games shows, shoe laces, sunburn recovery and swimming, telephone conversations. It is weird waiting to see what clump comes next. The biggest dread is the big clumps of embarrassment, and failures at work, and terrible restaurant experiences and sore stomachs, toothaches and vomiting. These are all counter balanced, naturally, by periods of beautiful reading and watching experiences, delectable food and stimulating walks. At the end of the day, it is reliving the best moments of your substantive self: as son, bachelor, father and husband. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

JUST ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

ON ANOTHER BIRTHDAY DECEMBER 21, 2024 I MUST grow up and own that I have turned a certain number today. It is, after all, only a number. It is a state of mind. Turning ... is nothing at all. Feel overwhelmed if you like. Sure, it is quite remote from, unfamiliar to, a distant stranger of 21. 21 was a long time ago. Do you remember the party you had at home. The people you knew then that you do not know now? The mistakes you made? But it was still the same you. You quoted King Lear, if you recall. King Lear was pretty fresh then. But quoting King Lear when you were 21 shows that it is still you. Turning... is a piece of cake, and easy to own up to. No embarrassment or shame. It is a simple two syllable number that has a fine ring to it- the way that the final syllable- the ‘ty’ at the end, bounces confidently of the roof of the mouth like the sound of an old-fashioned cash register. As I write I suddenly feel that I can get used to this number and laugh off the way that I have been dreading it these past couple of days. How ridiculous. I can even start to embrace it. I am embracing it. It is a fine number and makes me feel full of wisdom. I have an advantage over so many people. Wise, experienced, knowledgeable, sharp, but not deteriorating. People older than me are deteriorating. Their minds are becoming soft like marshmallow. And those younger often haven’t got a clue. They are still figuring things out. Aha, what a great feeling! Now that I have turned … on December the 21st (this birth date has been with me for quite a while now- it is a loving, comforting number- it clings to me in a protective way- a date I have always been proud of- a source of comfort and strength, coming along once every year, and always anticipated, especially when I was 21…) Yes, now that I have suddenly turned…, (and fully embracing it like I have those other years that ended with the ching of ‘ty’) I am thinking about all the things I am grateful for the way that turning … has allowed me to be. Look how rich is the knowledge of my favourite writers. The way that I can still read perceptively- past my peak, sure- (remember the absolute youthful pleasure of reading Women in Love and To The Lighthouse when I was in my twenties?)- but still savouring good reads, absorbing new fiction and writers’ letters, my brain a little softened and weary, but still in reasonably sharp nick. I have a body of overseas knowledge behind me. Famous people’s houses, famous galleries and libraries and museums. A great painting is still a great painting. I haven’t had the actual picture in front of me for a long time, but I am certain that Sunflowers still speaks to me, as does the person who created it. I wasn’t much older than 21 when I stumbled across Bathers at Asnieres- its powerful massive sprawl on the wall- and Guernica at a different museum in a different country, but at the same remote age. I will probably see them again. I still have years left. They will impact me again, of that I am sure. Now I find myself at the age of … (proudly I might add again), I still love hot food like curries and spices and chillies and sauces. I can still taste these things like I am 21 again. Whiskey still has a nice kick. My smell is not bad. I could never really smell that well back then either. I can walk and I can run. I realise that a few more birthdays that end in ‘ty’ might put paid to that (I know people close to me that this has happened to), but right now even having 21 as a remote memory, doesn’t mean I cannot whack on those black Puma runners of mine and run around the oval several times- ten or twelve, in fact. That’s pretty good. Ok let’s not get on to seeing and hearing. Much, much deteriorated. Looks the same. Wow, certainly not 21 anymore. The lines, the skin, the hair, the hands, the neck. All sad imitations of my previous self. And the hearing… oh, don’t start. The seeing even more depressing. To be going blind… It is a terrible, terrible thing. You feel powerless, uncertain, fumbling, alienated and insecure and disadvantaged… But I am embracing this new age of mine as I wake up early on this day, right? December the 21st is a great day. The age I suddenly have forced upon me is fine. Wow, all the things I can still do. The physical stuff, and all the processing. I am going to go back to bed and sleep a bit more so I can enjoy this special day when I wake up again that little bit more, by being alert, awake, not worrying any more…

STATES OF MIND

SITTING on the bed with an ok red wne and 'the boy' dog, still in the first week of hols and feeling relaxed, and I confess to a kind of guarded happiness, life doesn't seem immediately filled with strong and subtle pressures. Of course I am lazy and unfulfilled and static in my emotions and behaviours, but at least not as restless, aggressive, unhappy, anxious at this very moment in time. Well, I am rarely of ever aggressive. But anxious too often, yes.