Pearly Gates
Life is random and neither cruel nor beneficent. Life doesn’t give a fuck about your feelings. That’s like asking if the overpass down by the Hilton gives a fuck about your cancer. Does the wind give a shit when you moan out in horror? Do the mountains bend over and cry?
Life is hard and painful as hell but so fucking what? What’s the use of bemoaning that fact? Whining accomplishes nothing. Instead, take it upon yourself to meet your maker with a smile on your lips and a laugh at the back of your throat.
When you meet God/Satan/Mother Earth/Tupac at the Pearly Gates, try and think of something funny to say. If you can die with a sense of humour then you win at this weird-ass game called life. If you go out moaning and screaming, freaking everyone out, well, that’s your prerogative, but it bums everyone out and you have a way worse time of it. Why not enjoy your demise?
‘Come on, skin sack,’ you say, slapping your belly, ‘let’s see how this one degrades. Will my heart go first or my lungs or my brain? Which part of me was compromised at the start, coded a teensy-weensy super important gene sequency bit off?’
I guess when we laugh at Death, we laugh with Death because Death laughs at us all the time. Want to know what Death sounds like? Picture a 3-year-old girl in a highchair laughing her head off, clapping her mini hands in delight.
Death looks on and approves. Why? Because we’re strong in that moment, stronger than all the fucked-up shit feelings we coulda been feeling in those very same seconds. Laugh and say yes yes yes to the brutality and mayhem. Even when you wanna sink and cry and tap outta the game, look at those around you and say, ‘Thank you.’
Feel the sun on your skin. A warm breeze is blowing, bringing in the salty tang off the sea. A gull arcs through the sky, eclipsing the sun for a second. Can you feel the sand under your feet – hard-packed and cold. Grind your heel into the sand, twist a little and apply some pressure. Now step back and look at the mark.