I am not an excessively morbid person. Really, I'm not. I'm not fascinated by the dead, or the "afterlife", or whatever. I don't pine away my days, wondering when my unique spark of sentience will be snuffed out forever. Also, I'm not obsessed with dead 'things', like corpses, or the act of killing things either. None of that.

But I will acknowledge that I am Strange.

When I was in 5th grade, my class was required to do a "current events" report, at the end of each week. For months I brought in the most grotesque and disturbing stories I could find. Natural disasters, train wrecks, chemical spills, car accidents... that sort of thing. For me, the 'hook' of the story was obvious: the real world drama of life & death. My teacher was remarkably unfazed... until I started doing my reports from obituaries in the local paper.

Again, the 'hook' was simple: these were the stories of REAL PEOPLE, who had just shuffled off the mortal coil. Awesome. Also, the obits were really short. They always had a ton of interesting facts shoved into them too. I tried to pick interesting people, maybe folks I'd have liked to meet. Ya know? Just a meditation on these cool dead people, who (until recently) lived in our community. In defensive hindsight, this is just a budding civic minded activity.





I suppose a phone call to my parents was in order. And the inevitable 'talking to' that followed. Honestly, though, I think people got the wrong impression. It wasn't Death that was fascinating to me - it was the death of People. Well, the way the stories were written, anyway.

Needless to say, I was always Strange. For as far back as I can remember, there was always something... different about my sense of humor, my sense of self. A lot of it came from my older brothers, I guess. But a good portion of it was purely my own spirit.

Now, I'm getting older. At some point, I guess, people start thinking of themselves that way: "getting older". As if to say, "not quite Old, but close". There really are different stages to our lives and our perceptions thereof. Especially men, I think, judge themselves based on some crazy idea of 'vigor', or 'strength' (inner & physical). That certainly applies to me.

My birthday approaches like a starving man to a buffet; rapacious and eager to fill itself with delicious... uh, things? Ok, bad analogy. It approaches with the doom-filled ticking of clock, whose spring is more unwound than wound. Yeah, that's good. And my thoughts are nice and dark.

Alexandra and I are having a little party - since our birthdays are close together. A costume party. A 'morbidly themed' costume party: "One Year Closer to DEATH", to be specific. It's not my intention to mock Death, or anything so gauche as all that. Really, it's just that I think that Death (like many Serious Things in our culture) is taken way too seriously.

Anything that CAN be taken too seriously by people, usually IS - and in the worst possible way.







I'm still not sure exactly what I'm gonna wear. Maybe a big ole skull mask? I could do a decent Grim Reaper... I could dramatically predict some kinda gory demise that I might suffer... Whatever I end up with, I'm sure it will be very tasteful.

Yeah.

-BRP