… Girls comb their hair in the rearview mirror
And the boys try to look so hard … --- Springsteen
It was a big hit in the day. Springsteen had dirt under his nails. Several years back when Tipper gore was just a senator’s wife and they never even looked to the white house, she started the whole Mothers Against Rock and Roll thing, well, I don’t remember the name, but it was for labeling in the music industry. Springsteen however was held up as some kind of good example. I think it was Reagan who quoted something from Born in The USA.
What made Springsteen a Rock God to the working class though, I mean besides crunchy guitars and a beat a paraplegic could dance to, was that his lyrics had grease under the nails. Born in the USA wasn’t any more patriotic than Born to run was, I don’t know, tipper gore safe --- I wanna die with you Wendy on the streets tonight in a never ending kiss ----
We were butt rockers here. The Seventies show would have been a lot different if I had written it and it was staged here. Probably not as funny. Springsteen sort of had it right in simple grease under the nails way; sex, death and muscle cars.
I think it’s been like that since, I don’t know, forever, Sex Death and something that makes them both look romantic. For all the eight zillion TV dramas about teens and their “issues” they leave the whole death thing out or it becomes a single episode object lesson and everyone is scared and sorry. I’m not being morbid, but if we’re going to focus on that age group (and culturally we, Americans, seem hell bent on it) there really is the whole flirting with the boundaries of mortality thing. Sex and death are so closely related because at some point they are both the exact same grand mystery and exactly as out of reach.
Whatshisname from the counting crows was more eloquent in that song with --- all the instruments of faith and sex and god in the belly of a black winged bird --- means the same thing, talks to the teen who is in his/her twenties. Make no mistake, theist or atheist, faith and god are two faces of death, optimistic ones, but ultimately faces of death. Every religion has at its core a rebirth of some kind, whether it’s heaven, Valhalla or the seven fold path to enlightenment, you still gotta die to get there.
End of life stuff. Been dealing with a lot of it. Before you start drafting some nice note or supportive note, I’m not talking about me or anything I’m struggling with. Just observations. Most of the people I know in this town are in their eighties or here because they’ve got someone in their eighties. That whole five stages of grief theory? Yeah, it only works with a religion. You can’t bargain with entropy, you can’t bargain with the grave, if death isn’t personified or has someone pulling the strings, there’s no one to bargain with, for that matter no one to get angry at, and acceptance, well, harsh. I’m talking about the one doing the dying, not, you know, me.
My dad got a head start on all that, good thing too; he isn’t in control of his faculties enough to do it now. For a short while, in his late sixties he was cursing god, though there isn’t one, he’s an atheist, then, one more heart attack later reminding god that he was a Jew. Both made sense to me. It’s why there are religions. Oh, in case someone’s offended, well go fuck yourself, I’m going to offend the other side --- I don’t disbelieve in god, I’m an agnostic because I don’t believe in religion, if there’s a god I’ve yet to see a religion I think that knows shit about him/her/it. I’m just saying the shit becomes important once the fear of death grips your heart.
Personally I faced my greatest fear of death, well, close to it, and expect to more frequently. I held Herschel’s head as he went to sleep forever. I’m a lot more afraid of losing my children (and make no mistake my relationship to my dogs were and will be as close as to my children as it can get, much closer than either of my wives) than I am of my own death. It’s the hard part about getting another dog, he’s got ten to fifteen years, you know, maybe a bit longer, but I’m not sure I want to outlive a loved one that I don’t have to. You know? That whole it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all horseshit I think only applies to virgins, I mean it does mean romantic love.
I don’t think it’s just me, but let’s pretend it is; romantic love is not a prime driving force the way love of a child is, it just isn’t, and no matter what you might tell one another in the back of daddy’s car or at the altar in formal clothes with a minister reading out your solemn vows, it will take hard work and dedication to keep that spark even just at a smoulder. Your kid? Your Dog? That spark starts as a raging bonfire and just gets brighter every day.
I know this isn’t universally true. I made a living off it not being true. Um, I was paid to rescue kids from parents who just didn’t feel it, put romantic entanglements before their kids, over and over again. Not everyone has that instinct, though, I suspect everyone knows they are supposed to. Every shitty thing every person does with an IQ above sixty (legally mentally handicapped) knows what the right answer to a moral question is, they are just missing that part that compels the action. I think maybe these folks bargain with god at the end.
Me I got my business straight whether I got to face judgment or dirt. I didn’t get it straight because I’ll die one day, I got it straight, and keep it straight, because until I die I have to live with myself. In my mind that’s the natural consequence; one’s own conscience. If it don’t bug you you’re probably a socio-path, which doesn’t mean you’ll kill a busload of kids and nuns, but you’re more likely to than I am and I hope when you do it’s in a state with capital punishment.
Yeah, I know, the grossly left wing dawg believes in capital punishment. There are things people do that they can’t ever come back from. I don’t want to make a paper argument or debate it. There are things people do that you can’t come back from and it’s inhumane to suffer them a life of incarceration and murder to put them back on the streets. Yes, I know, I’m sure there are innocent people on death row and no I don’t have a just solution, I’m just saying there are people who are never going to be whole, something in them is broke and nobody has the part that’ll fix it.
The reason for and the rule of corrections at all is to protect the community and protect the offender. Life in prison might be ok for the community … Sorry not a tangent I meant to go on.
I could bitch about the hospital. Not going to. It was a relief to know my dad was safe last night and that I wasn’t going to have to lift him and change his soiled clothing and try holding him up and … so on and so forth, and my mom was able to relax as well. She doesn’t do the lifting but she does do the stressing. Oh, ok, to be fair to romantic love, though this will sound cold, I mean it as sort of warm, --- you stay at it long enough you stop worrying about sparks, it becomes habit. I could probably write an essay, maybe a thin book on what I mean by that, here I’m just going with
I’m Spent.
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