"Death's in the Goodbye"

Well mother internet, here I am reporting back after a lifetime, or rather death time. Yes, as you should be able to gather from that sentence, I was in a death defying car crash and am now probably immortal (that IS the way those things pan out). But I'm not going to go into it, because it is actually a little bit boring with the whole rolypolying in a Peugeot 107 down a hill-side, being horrendously desperate for just one more day on the merry-go-round, realising that when it comes down to it I am an animal pulsating with adrenalin and will not allow myself to end. I promise you, death is about as unoriginal as you can get. It's been done billions of times billions of ways, and counting. All I can say about it is that while it's right in front of you with its mouth gaping open waiting to gobble and you are feeling extremely real with all the "ALERT!!!!" pituitary is dumping in you, you may babble "O Grandma, what big teeth you have" but secretly you know that you are going to slap that wolf upside the head and, if need be, crawl out of there piece by piece. You know this with complete certainty at the time, which isn't to say much other than you expand on your idea of certainty. When death approaches our concept certainty becomes pregnant with all sorts, and in the moment survival becomes its bastard offspring. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but basically all I meant to say is that rather than beg to live I demanded it, and so I am still here. If you don't learn to bend concepts a little they will break.

Now I am just left to mourn my Mr. Biggleworth Peugeot107 Esquire, ipod (most likely stolen by the POPO that later arrived on the scene) and a pretty pair of shoes. I have upgraded the lost latter two already and it has helped heaps in allowing me to move on.Nothing quite like trading in experience for materialism- you can list what you lost and replace it all with something better. You can eradicate all the traces of horror with trinkets found at bargain prices on ebay. Our ideas of ownership are really practical for that. They have turned out to be our framework for everything- trading, relationships etc... the idea that you can "have" something, imbue it with some kind of quality that makes it durably yours even if you turn your back on it and someone else then stumbles upon it, is grotesquely genius and uniquely human. In fact it is definitively so. Ownership is what makes us FUNCTION- any human act or relationship boils down to trade, which is only possible if both sides own something they can do swapsies with. Our emotions are commodities,our minds are assets, our bodies are stock. And it is all losing value by the day as we tick toward oblivion. At the moment we are rich because we are still relatively new and have a way to go yet (accidents withstanding)- so hurry up and barter wisely, my beauties. Barter for DRAMA, frippery and general intensity.

Although, having said that, apparently there are only 36 dramatic situations in life, as set out by Georges Polti in 1895, that perpetually pepper human existence. I don't think crashes feature in any kind of explicit manner, but apparently " 18) Discovery that one has had one's sister as a mistress" does. Those were different times, to be sure, and only all the way at number 28) on the list does the most hackneyed dramatic situation "Obstacles to Love" feature. That one alone could probably make up for 60% of life's troubles, but even if we have a pretty good go of it, drama is in shockingly short supply, it seems. One life will buy you exactly 36 different dramatic situations if you are very lucky, and chances are that should you score that variety you will probably be too apathetic to feel them as fully as you should. I mean, think about it. In the past (that be any time between pre-history and the renaissance) people merrily meandered around with broken legs and heinous diseases- for any emotion to be able to propel people THAT resistant to outside stimuli to do anything it would need to be absurdly intense. It makes me wonder whether they felt them stronger than we do, whether the fact that most of the time I'm pretty "meh" about most things (other than when I suffer from a flare up of immature annoyance about something petty) is because the 36 dramatic situations are not enough or have been done too much in every book, film or acquaintance's life. But right now I'm nomming Snackajacks, admiring Mr. Blue's handy DIY work that gave me a new SHELF, have my slumbering, snuffling catterling curled up and warming my toes, and I can feel happiness reasonably intensely. Nothing compared to the drama of having a sister for a mistress, though. I'll work on that.