10:28 am | 24 October 2003 | yeah, i just MIGHT freak out, come to think

Monday we were at Hi Ricky Noodle Shop, sharing some kind of peppery auberginey thing and the combination potstickers (three vegetarian for me, two chicken two pork for him, oh what a perfect world), talking, again, about dying.

I spear a pepper and a tomato wedge, then absentmindedly scratch my face with other end of chopstick: "If you were gonna die, would you want to know, or would you want it to be sudden?"

He is trying to figure out if there is a difference between the hot sauces in their little boats. "Oh, I would definitely want to know. There are a lot of people I'd have to call."

"No, I mean, if there weren't a lot of time. Like, would you rather be in a plane that was going down, so you'd have a couple minutes, or in a plane that exploded instantaneously?"

He ponders. "I would still wanna know, I think. You?"

I start hiccuping because that pepper was f'in HOT. Between lurches, I get out "No WAY. Take me out oblivious. Hic."

He waves to the waitress for more water. "Yeah, I can see that. I don't know you really well, but it seems like you'd freak out."

Would I freak out? Does "judit seleci" want to sell me "dxr~VICODIN~kk orderrr fr/m hoome" via email?

Of course I would freak out. Of course! Do you not see my endlessly jogging knee, incisor-deckled fingernails, nervously-plucked hems and the way condiments are left on tables I have occupied (sugar packets in colour order, jams and jellies separated by variety, non-dairy creamers in a ziggurat)? I am prone to freaking out, as well you know. But in this case, I don't believe my freakitude would be of the hyperventilative sort.

You guys: I would be pissed. I would be a singular combination of "Aw, shit, I never bought that lighthouse" and "What the fuck is UP, God? What's WITH this shit? Way to be, Lord. When I get up there I'm totally gonna punch you in the butt. Fuck."

Yes, dudes, if Heaven exists as in the Catholic conception, I will bust through the pearly gates like a gunslinger, accompanied by tumbleweeds and a faint drift of Enzio Morricone wah wah wah....ooooeeeeoooeeeooooo, and I will be a swangin'. If the afterlife is more Eastern in nature, then I am gonna be one pissed-off reincarnated...frickin...June bug or whatever. If there is no afterlife, then rest assured I will decompose angrily. And then, hopefully, rise again to feast on the living! IN A RAGING MANNER!

This is not gonna be one of those "But there is so much to live for! Think about kittens! And pudding! And trapping kittens in pudding!" No, fuck that. This isn't, either, a response to Elliott Smith. I'm not tackling that one. I don't have the right, and anyway, this conversation took place pre-trag. All I mean to say, I guess, is that despite having long ago decided that karma is a krock, my justice-lovin' Libran nature* means that I so totally still feel, somewhat subconsciously (or is it preconsciously? Nica, help), that I'm owed something: that I haven't laboured under a hail of brimstone and doo-doo for the better part of vingt-cinq ans just to motherfucking CRASH INTO THE GROUND IN A METAL TUBE, without even enough time to drink all the mini-scotches from first class before I become a cr�pe Claudette. Dear Lord, at least give me time to, you know, get it on one final time**, or something, you big, Holy Butthead.

Freaking out mightily since roughly 1983, clm.

*I am not stupid enough to think that one's birthdate determines one's personality, but in my case, at least, it's so damn fitting that it's become an easy shorthand for many of my quirks, such as love of decorating and inability to get to the frickin' point.

* c.f. Bowie "I wanna be screwing when the nightmare comes/I wanna come quick then die," from "We Prick You."

note: I super-mega love Songs: Ohia, and its (his? Jason Molina's) weird, Midwestcentric blend of desolate love-songs, near-feudal ruminations on honor, and spare, considered instrumentation, and the track I have been obsessively repeating this week is so totally relevant to my current mood that, though posting lyrics is completely lametarded, here:

Oriole (Crab Orchard)
Captain the horseman
and hound south travelling slowly
My loyality to crossroads and thresholds
Comes with my rising hope to leave this hunt unfollowed
My blood's courage courses to rendezvous with freedom
With freedom
With freedom
With freedom

I swore nothing in my passing
In my passing
To die, like surrender, would teach me a lesson
Judas they too would cry
O oriole in the mile before dawn
Do not return a treasonous song unguarded
Unguarded
Unguarded
Unguarded