flash before eyes.

all images: Raymond van Mil

in brief.

worm school.

As a child, my first conception of death was directly related to the demise of our numerous ill-fated house pets and the assorted wild animals that wandered through our yard, with guilty parties present on both sides. Learning about death in this cat/mouse/dog/bird/snake/toad/spontaneously-combusting-gerbil manner may be a fairly common childhood scenario, or the outcome of growing up in the semi-wilderness of the Smoky Mountains, or a dead giveaway of a relatively privileged American youth. I consider myself fortunate to count the discovery of an exploded gerbil in situ as the bloodiest confrontation of my life before age 6. Be that as it may, it certainly had its consequences for my tiny Hilly brain.

Ours was a house without television, on the side of a mountain, in a neighborhood without many children. This left me to invent my own diversions, one of which was Worm School. Worm School, as a pastime, emerged after a particularly busy period of burying deceased critters in shoe boxes behind our house. I have my mother to thank for these funereal rites. As far as I know, when it came to ushering pets into the hereafter, she never subscribed to the improvised-burial-at-sea, toilet-flushing school of undertaking.

In Worm School, I would capture earth worms and place them in a pickle jar. During their incarceration, I would attempt to teach them to read by attaching note paper to the jar and lecturing them on the English alphabet. I can remember this pursuit being dimly connected to the idea of eventually being underground, for eternity, with worms, and a genuine desire for communication with my only company.

For this reason, I might like to be buried in the mountains where I grew up. In my imagination, there live a highly intelligent race of eloquent earth worms, deft conversationalists, who might alleviate my lasting anxiety about this morbid playground rhyme, which I learned around the same time:

Don’t ever laugh as the hearse goes by
For you may be the next to die
They’ll wrap you in a big white sheet
From your head down to your feet
They’ll put you in a big black box
And cover you with dirt and rocks
All goes well for about a week
Until your coffin begins to leak
The worms crawl in
The worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle in your snout
They eat your eyes
They eat your nose
They eat the jelly between your toes
So you better not laugh when the hearse goes by
Or you will be the next to die

+++

outtake.

surrender.

Giving Myself Up
by Mark Strand

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
again without anything.

test run.

Here we find morbid television brilliance. Dutch more-real-than-reality program Man Bijt Hond went door to door asking people to decorate miniature models of their own coffins. They called it -what else than- Pimp Je Doodskist (Pimp Your Casket). This episode was apparently inspired by an undertaker in Limburg who ran a contest: the person who designs the best coffin wins a free funeral. In need of a rainy Sunday craft project? Look no further.
In the process of writing our own funeral scores, requisite attention was paid to what is variously called the burial container, the memorial object, the receptacle, or even (creepy-quaintly) het laatste huisje. After a disturbing-cum-informative visit to the Uitvaart Beurs in April (truly deserving of a post of its own), my foremost request was ‘no plastic handles’. Beyond this I want something colorful, possibly sparkly, mosaic-like, yet which doesn’t succumb to pitfalls of the Kindergarden Kraft Project look. Ever the insomniac in life, Mark wants to be buried in something that resembles a large bed. For him the euphemism Dirt Nap holds special significance. It’s really a glass-half-full perspective. Anat requested a half-egg-shaped wooden container, simple yet beautiful, ‘think Swedish design’. She saw herself nestled inside it, surrounded by an opulent and beautifully colored natural fabric. Acutely aware of the potential to spend the hereafter in tactile agony, she specified ‘if the cloth in question should be wool, it must not be the itchy kind’. Indeed, it’s probably best to avoid that itch you (eternally) can’t scratch scenario.

famous last words.

Eulogy To A Hell Of A Dame
By Charles Bukowski

some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you’ve been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here’s a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.