Planxty (Death & Life)
Anytime I feel sad I just take out both my passports and stare at them. It calms me down and makes me realise it's all been worth it.
What the fuck are we doing here? Any of us – let's start with me.
My preoccupations as of late include my face only appearing in public when it is a different colour to my neck.
Going to cafes where people who serve me a coffee are male and clearly bothered by me. I like this. I like by simply being I can bother people. Is it my eyes? The way I smell? It's my childhood. They can tell. I am a fraud. I don't belong in this coffee shop selling vintage clothes. Dogs used to poop and pee on newspapers in my house. What is disruptive to this environment at present, it's the visibility of strangeness and suffering on my face probably due to the slow malfunction of my former eating disorder and current consilitory relationship with wine. And now I need coffee, that I don't deserve because I add a dash of milk to it. Clearly my tongue is for talking and not tasting.
I also like being made fun of when I am not around. I like people who make me feel discussed. Both spellings. There is something to be said for keepiing your enemies close. Look at the genius revealed in enemy pairings through out history. Examples such as Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan and Peter Hook and Dudley Moore annnnd other ones. I want a Carl Reiner to my Mel Brooks, but have limited resources.
Other preoccupations:
What's for dinner tonight and how it doesn't matter. I asked my husband as I left the house today what he would like for dinner just as he is getting in the shower. I did this just so I could start a frustrated conversation about something that doesn't matter at all kicking everyone's morning off to the right start.
Why was I born at all? My parents were two kind of annoying people with a neoliberal narrative of consumption that they were both ultimately disappointed by and lead to both of their ugly departures from earth. I can say what I want about them they are dead which is a relief of sorts.
My husband is a nail scissors guy and I am a clipper person. My husband, or as I like to call him lately, Judy Garland's mother, much to his chagrin is a very intelligent and critical in a 'know's best stage mom' sort of way. I do take his advice once I get over my adolescent frustration with it. My husband, my husband my husband: we both look like married children, and often in the privacy of our own home, behave as such. My husband is the exception to my fear of men. He told me to write down some anecdotes as part of my stand up routine, and maybe some jokes as well. I have been hiding in a pretentious and esoteric landscape of absurd observation and non sequitur. Now it's time for me to show you anecdotal evidence that I deserve to stand here before you, and before myself. As if my standing and talking is an acceptable state of affairs for any of us gathered here. Scripted activist I. Hypocrite first, person second. Moira Brady Averill. Owns clothes made my slaves. Gland obsessed. Recovering bulimic. Wine and garlic enthusiast. Denture wearer. A walking talking birthday party of human life.
I've been thinking a lot about what makes a good death vs. a bad death. A friend of mine just died last week, and I get to call her friend because that's what she was. I mean, we hugged and faked plans and now I regret that deeply. 'We should hang out' never lead to hanging out, and now that option is the most gone that any option can be. She died a good death: on her 29th birthday. She was wonderful and is remembered by many who actually took the time to get to know her and love her.
My parents both died bad deaths. That's what this world is set up for people to do. The systems in place age people prematurely and drive them into early graves. Poverty comes in multiple forms of boredom and torture. Their decline is emblematic of the dysfunctions of late capitalism for the lower middle classes financial decisions backfiring.
But that's not that interesting. Our family pets and their mistreatments and deaths are far more easily explained and metaphorically relevant.
We had these two dogs name Planxty and Fin McCool who's shooting star domestic pet life and grizzly pet death kind of mirrored my parent's life. Planxty was a chunky black lab who fell off a porch as a puppy, and had an arthritic posterior as a result. She then gave birth to two litters of puppies, one was planned and the other was smelled out by a local mutt. Plaxty had an emotional relationship with food. We used to make fun of her for being pudgy. She was a kind and relatively intelligent animal that didn't do stairs very well, much like my mother, Sara. Once, late winter, we were on the ice of Silver Lake and Planxty fell through it and couldn't pull herself out of the water. My father said to leave her there to die, and his ice fishing buddie couldn't stand it and he scrambled on his belly out to her and pulled her out of the water. She would have died a more humane death that day had she stayed in.
Fin was a muscular and healthy chocolate lab. He was gentle yet sharp and had an intelligence and instinct that my father responded to. One of these Benji or Sounder like creatures: a memorial heroic dog text could star his character points easily. Dad and Fin were best friends. On April Fool's day in the early nineties Fin was shot by a drunk neighbour named Mr. Shackford. All we know is he went into the woods, there was a gun shot and he was never recovered. Mr. Shackford used to ride around the forest on a four wheeler looking for deer. That's a common pass time in the area. Fin ultimately dodged the bullet of my familial decline by taking that bullet in the woods.
Now you know how they died and did not die. How we will or will not die and will. Eventually we will go. Why are we here in the first place?
Also, stop making fun of people. It's unhelpful and way more interesting and creative to be kind.
I'm not ready to be happy yet
I'm not ready at all
But when I am
You'll be first to know
What it takes from me
To give to you
My heart is honest affair
I live for you
I die for you
I'm nearly there
When the location of a dream reveals
a stolen stream of tears to choke away
And memories
Gone by can go astray
That field hides many holes of shame
I tripped into so unaware
We will fill them up
Make earthy bumps
and jump from one to one
And when I go you'll be the first to know