after-life.

(the formatting was jumbled on this piece as it went through the e-mail systems.)


i've come to realize that we are all in fact living on the edge of living. too afraid to jump in and get all wet. we dip our toes and crinkle our noses as we try and weigh a thousand different dicisions.
in the end we will be pushed in eventually. some snot nosed kid will indefinatly run up behind us at an undetermined time and with all his force and flabby arms, he will fling us forward into a pool filled with our own supposed fears and troubles.
it will get darker than. the unexpected plunge will leave us all gasping for air, synapses firing, a body preparing for momantary expiration. in the heart of our concious minds will feel okay, deep down we all know that we are okay, and that everything we always remain okay.
we're the good guy, no matter how the script plays, and if we expire, the film will end. all of our friends and families will walk away saddened, thinking constant thoughts about the movie that was never finished. in all reality they will move on. our ashes will be spread in the last scene and then the occasional family member of dear friend will replay the trailor of our lives on the anniversary of its ending.
there is no constant theme of faithful support for a spirit that has lost its body, there is no perpetual remberance. our loved ones will forget us, they have too many other interests that need attending to. memories are short lived, they play quickly for a moment, leave a smile on a face until the latest sports news, gossip column or personal problem crops up to divert the attention from the immortal retelling of a long last friend's life and passing.
even the people who make a mark, leaving their brand on ivy covered buildings or local businesse store-fronts all will just become a place. an immortal life as a physical incarnation as the campus dining hall or that shabby old furniture store out on the highway will not outstand the grasp of time and troubles.
our memories do not outlive us. we make careful preperation to have them locked deep inside us before we ever take leave of this place. they are ours to keep, free from time but of no use to anyone after.
i assume that when i'm dead and gone, my writings will find a landfill, bonfire or in the worst case a sink ledge next to a toilet for those emergency times. i'm no jack, i'm no herman, hell, i'm not even a w.m. young. there will be no library catalogues, there will be no congress driven achriving. it will all be for naught, a carefully transcribed instruction book on how not to live thrown down the heating pipes of history, headed into the furnace of time.
twenty minutes after you've expired everyone you know will be describing you in the past tense, "he lived such a great life, he's in a better place now," and all the other cliches that stammer from the lips of those who don't realize that it makes no differance what they say at that point.
within three days your name will be a pariah. held back in bar-room lips, a cannon that could shatter the air, an incantation that could bring someone to tears, so it would be best to keep it quiet. that's how it will be.
the last people to remember us will be those who knew us least. they will be the ones caught in sporadic thought, "man, i wonder if he's still putting around somewhere." these people will be too afraid to ask the loved ones, the cherished ones, what exactly has transpired throughout the course of a friendship forgotten. then, they will see some back page dentist office obituary and spend a moment reflecting on that rainy day movie or coffee shop conversation.
then it will be over, truly over. we will be lost to the time and transgressions of later men.
the only way to live on is in the small ways.
the impressions we make and the influences we have, no matter how large or small the may end up to be are the only after life one can bank on. that is immortality, stored in the way you kept your combs by the sink, stacked in their orders. the ideas, the ways of thinking that are adopted by others will carry us on. they will not realize, but they will preserve the memory of all of us.
they will keep our spirits alive in a five o'clock card game or as a highlighter clipped inside a dime-store novel. quiet worship to those who came before, executed through blown smoke rings or upside down wristwatches.
for some, the things they pass on will not be as simple or pleasant. our inclinations of ignorance, a bruised cheek on the face of a wife, a habit of searching for answers at the bottoms of bottles; these can also be the ways we live on.
i guess that's what it comes down to, the big split in good over evil that drives billions of people to war, bloodshed, and empty beds. the simple fact that we are all immortal, living on through the things we let live through us. the actions that define us, the mannerism, the approaches to the everyday will all live on through someone until they pass it on to someone else. this keeps us alive.
our spirits are captured in the habits of those we influence, and our actions become their own angels or demons. a father who can't pass the bottle will raise sons that find wandering pavement in after-hours alleys. we are the good, we are the evil, and we insert it into others every second we draw breath.
we all need to take time to consider our demons, the things that we acquired that prove of no value, except on rainy days when the stakes were high but the colt broke his leg out of the gate. those are the times when we should look back and curse the wretched, praise the worthy, and account for those who have passed and are living inside of our own veins.
then hopefully someday we will be cursed or praised, scorned or worshiped, for the acts we executed and the ways we lived. that is immortality, that is an after-life.