I Just Turned 40

Today I was reminded by a friend that one day my blog may disappear--left untended, it may be swallowed into cyberspace or, if I'm lucky, sit unnoticed for year upon year and finally peter out when the entity that manages it goes defunct in the year 2056.

I sort of thought my blog was eternal. But now I feel the need to make a paper record. I like paper. It has the peril of forever attached to it, although moths and mealyworms may render it worthless. When humans go extinct (as they surely will), won't there be some wan scraps of poetry still floating about? Maybe, for a time. But I doubt the bound printouts of my blog will survive much, printed as they are on non-archival paper unprotected from the onslaught of fire, water, mold.

Why so dire, little pony? Maybe, upon learning that the best friend of a friend has died yesterday, I renounce my earlier proclamation that Death Is a Media Conspiracy. I don't know too many people who have died. Mostly the very, very old. Someone who is 30 is not supposed to go. Oh hell, I don't like to be proven wrong! Can someone show me the death certificate?

The other night my friend said "I just turned 40. Soon I'll be 50. Then 60. And soon I'll be dead." I laughed most heartily, but then I stopped.

I went to a funeral earlier this month. It was for my godmother. I brought my young baby, only 5 months. I walked down the aisle before the ceremony, and saw old face after old face. All of them were tearful, pinched, hunched--looking as if their best friend had died. Oh gosh, people, why do you have to look that way, I thought, as I wheeled my baby down the aisle. They all must be about 98 years old! What was their problem?! Their best friend had just died.

Everyone loved that the baby was at the funeral. I felt it was OK to bring him, because a baby at a funeral just says that things are going to go on. The big circle of life and death and all that. When my godmother's brother, a dear man who is a pediatrician, saw the baby, he clutched him to his chest and would not let him go. Other people clutched him, until he had been clutched in a circle of young and old, hoping to smell his sweet baby hair and feel his hands pulling at their lapels.

I'm continuing this post the next day and I just have to say "What a bummer, man! Why do you have to go on and talk about death and all that shee-ite? Just stop, man! Man!" (I'm not a man but I like to use the word "man.")

I thought that I might send this blog dark, because I'm gittin' real old and if I don't work on my novel now I am going to RUN OUT OF TIME AND DIE. But then I realized:

Without humor we are lost
I don't have the wherewithwhatever to work on my novel yet
Drunken typing fingers do not produce novel
Novel can be %^$^%#$%^ published on my ^^&$%^ blog if I so choose, blow ye all!
Novel sucketh? No, it's brilliant, and there's the rub.
Too many bottles. So little time.
Cannot type without serois mispellings.

Death come quick like dagger!