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Monday 21 May 2018

I did it my way

Tell the truth: I thought these guys were
better dressed then those in front
On Saturday I had a choice: wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Windsor Castle nuptials or the UK (soccer) equivalent of the Super Bowl. In fact that's not true, the choices were as wide and as varied as my imagination: I could have learned to bake a Linzertorte, rehearsed my warm-up scales BUT WITH ATTACK, watered my newly planted plants, cut my toe-nails (Always a light engineering project getting to that twisted-round small toe on the right), dozed following my toast-with-egg-mayonnaise lunch, resumed my fifth novel Rictangular Lenses; the world you might have said was my oyster.

Instead I faced the void by preparing Lasting Powers of Attorney for (a) financial matters, and (b) health/care. In short allowing VR and/or my daughters to take over the materialistic aspects of my existence when I snuff it or lapse into ga-gaism. VR did the same assuming she is overtaken first. It's like a will but with wider, more pragmatic aims.

The UK government does its best to ensure all is kosher. Under Preferences and Instructions I have the option to tell my attorneys (Not real ones who would fleece me into poverty; ones I've ordained) about what I wish for and what I insist on. There's even a style guide: Use words like "prefer" and "would like" or "must" and "have to".

Best of all: "Most people leave this page blank." Chat being preferable.

The questions are easy, the signing process (For another day, thank Mammon.) tortuous. My impression is this: my death and/or descent into living oblivion are serious matters. But only for OTHER PEOPLE. I will inherit permanent darkness or physical incompetence, true, but also a complete absence of forms to fill in. That’s a plus.

But will I be such stuff as dreams are made on? Got an opinion?

2 comments:

  1. I simply don't know. If one could wear a toga, live on a cloud, and be happy as a clam I suppose that could be fun. But, you know... I imagine there will be a lack of awareness, if not immediately then eventually. There is a terror in not knowing; however, death happens to everyone so once it is over it must be tolerable, normal, okay. Perhaps the best case scenario is that death is nothing. What do you think?

    I kind of struggled to understand your last sentence, I hope this is what you were asking about.

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  2. Colette: There's nothing so objectionable as one who goes around casting unexplained - and probably inappropriate - quotes here and there. Prospero in The Tempest but I'm sure you knew. Why did I do it? A passing thought: might I survive anyone's wakening, might I be remembered in someone's working day?

    ...............the great globe itself—
    Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve,
    And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
    Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep.


    And, subconsciously given your question, could there be any more comforting suggestion than "rounded with a sleep". The terror surely lies in the way we die, not in death itself which is the great normality. Would you like to unearth the roots of that terror prelude? Easy. Forget the New Testament and think on the vengeful Jahweh; think of the whimsical game of chess he played with Abraham and Isaac. And Job (just to placate the Devil). These days, as Avus says in another context, they'd lock him up. Should that "him" take a cpital?

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