Immortalist Manifesto

From my (savant!) cousin, Robert Scott.

Today I amended the tagline of Immortalist Manifesto from “If you were going to live forever…” and added “And especially if you’re not.”

It has become abundantly clear to me lately that while taking a long view of life is great for things like wildlife habitat conservation and water source preservation, we also have to live in the now because it’s unnervingly possible that today may be all we get.

And we should be living like it.

Well, it’s official. I hate acrylics.

OK, I should qualify that. I don’t hate acrylics. I hate painting with acrylics. Other people can paint with them ’til they’re blue in the face, and more power to them. My friend Renee Vevea does stunning work with acrylics. (You should all buy her work, by the way.)

Well, I’m happy for all of you who can somehow make this ridiculous, hateful, fast-drying medium work for you. I am not among you.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of “diving in” and living while I’m alive–and simply finishing something–I completed a painting last weekend, with acrylics.

This weekend, I plan to paint the same image again, but properly.

Properly = with oils. :P

Most recent album purchase: Jennifer Knapp’s Letting Go. Dive In is the first song on the album, and kind of describes how I’ve been feeling—and trying to live—lately.

Careful what you say
Careful who might hear
Someone else inside the universe
Could write it down
And you’ll be hearing it for years

Don’t fear, don’t fall
Just turn and face the wall
I’m like a convict with my hands locked over my head
I’m a dead man walking

I’m so tired of standing on the edge of myself
You know I’m longing for it
To dive in, dive in
You know it well
You’re about to push me over the edge
You know I’m longing for it
To dive in, dive in, dive

I’m tired of choking
The shallow waters I’ve been in
I’m ready to be baptised by water and blood
C’mon push me under

I’m so tired of standing on the edge of myself
You know I’m longing for it
To dive in, dive in
You know it well
You’re about to push me over the edge
You know I’m longing for it
To dive in, dive in, dive

I may be a fool to some, hero to others
But to you, just a lover
I’m so tired of standing on the edge of myself
You know I’m longing for it
To dive in, dive in
You know it well
You’re about to push me over the edge
You know I’m longing for it
To dive in, dive in
Only your voice will push me over the edge
dive in, dive in

Only your voice will push me over the edge
dive in, dive in, dive

Three are dead. I am number four.

I’m not. But the seeming winnowing down of my social circle lately is making me feel that extinction is lurking in the shadows.

Strangely, that’s not slowing me down. Actually, I feel energized. Sad–sad to the point that I feel like my chest is going to collapse–but not slowed down. I feel like mind–my brain, my heart–have gotten a much-needed “factory reset.” The hour-long commute that irritated the hell out of me a couple weeks ago feels like a gift now. The closeness of the gray morning humidity feels comforting, where it used to disgust me because it’ll ruin my hair.

I’m feeling expansive lately. I feel like the life in me has a new spark–ignited by the passing of other lives around me. Sad that that’s what it takes sometimes, but a gift nonetheless.

In my hometown, there are two families everyone knows. The Simmons family, who own the oldest lumber yard in town, and the Lind family, who own the only greenhouse in town. My dad owns one, my mom works at the other during the summer when she’s not teaching.

Two hours after my husband and I arrived at my folks’ house for Memorial Day weekend, the phone rang. Initially we didn’t recognize the number, so let the answering machine pick it up. “Gwen, I’m sorry to give you this news this way,” the voice of my mom’s coworker said. “Andy Lind was killed in a car wreck last night…”

There was a half-second flurry on our end–what did she say? who did she say–before my mom grabbed the phone off the cradle and caught the call before the coworker hung up. She disappeared down the hall while the rest of us, feeling awkward and helpless, looked at each other.

When she emerged, my mom told us Andy Lind, with whom I’d taken speech class as a college freshman, had been found dead, in a burned-out pickup, on one of the infinite backgrounds of southern Iowa. No other car seemed to have been involved.

When my grandma died, I hyperventilated. I didn’t do that this time.

When I learned one of my other classmates (different college) had killed himself, I was shocked. I wasn’t this time–well, I was, but in a different way.

Because grandmas die, like it or not. And killing yourself is something you have to take action to do. But winding up dead on a back road at 28… How does that happen…?

As it turned out, it happens when you drink and drive. Initially I thought I might feel better that Andy had been drinking. No less tragic, and even more of a waste–but it would at least mean there was a choice made at some point. He chose not to hand over his keys, etc. It wasn’t the universe simply fucking with the natural order of things. But I don’t feel better. Because he’s still dead at 28–whether he could have prevented it or not. His family is still devastated. And so am I, even though we weren’t what I’d call friends. He was a good guy. Good heart, if poor choices.

I read the trubute. I sent a card (and forged my younger brother’s signature :P ).I read the police report. It’s unlikely he felt anything at all when he died.

But I can’t stop seeing the beautiful spring weather and thinking how Andy can’t feel the breeze, or the warmth of the long absent sun. I can’t stop thinking about his mother, who for the first two days did nothing but pace the house, holding Andy’s hat.

It’d be a cop out to turn this into a don’t-drink-and-drive morality tale, because everybody already knows that. And it doesn’t help unless you think of it before the tragedy can happen. But if there is something to be learned here, I think it’s this: Life is precious, and fleeting, and fragile. Do something great with it today, because there may not be a tomorrow.

My great-uncle died yesterday.

He was my grandma’s brother, and even though his name was Jack, we called him Uncle Doc because of his profession. It’s been years since I saw him, and yet when I got married, his was one of the first gifts that arrived.

One of the things I’ll always remember about him was actually told to me second hand; it had happened before I was born. He had pulled up to a stoplight in his unassuming but well-equipped vehicle next to a muscle car. The teenage driver of the other car kept trying to bait him, revving the engine and burning out when the light turned green. Uncle Doc just rolled his eyes, accelerating like normal, and said, “The driver knows.”