HOW DO WE REALLY DIE?

Here's a creepy thought. It came from a dream I had when I was in Texas a few weeks ago. It's just a fantasy, but it takes on an eerie plausibility when you look at the graphics I've marshaled here. I'll discuss these pictures in a minute, but first...the dream.

I'll start with a question: what if humans were immortal? I don't mean some time in the future, as in science fiction, or in the afterlife or in reincarnation...I mean physically immortal right now. What if, unbeknown to us, we've always been immortal ever since we first walked the earth? What if none of us dies a natural death. What if we have to be killed, otherwise our cells would continue to divide indefinitely? What if every human who has ever lived was........murdered?

It's a scary thought. It implies a murderer, someone who thins the flock. Those could be  devils or space aliens. It could be a race of Morlocks, as in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. It could be quasi-supernatural thugs who enjoy killing for its own sake, and who have a vulture-like ability to detect physical and mental weakness. My dream was about the latter.

I dreamed that I was in a parking lot, looking for my car when I noticed a couple of thugs heading my way. I was the target, no doubt about it, and there was no doubt the thugs had a murderous intent: it was broad daylight and the lot was full of shoppers, but the men savagely pushed them aside as if they were rag dolls. I ran into a nearby supermarket and the thugs ran after me. Inside they tore up the market in order to get at me. I managed to stay one step ahead, but I was getting tired and the thugs seemed to have infinite energy. At that point I woke up.

Lying in the dark with my eyes open and my heart pounding, my half-conscious mind filled in the rest of the story. After I escaped, the joking thugs walked out of the market, confident that they would get me in the next encounter. Previously frightened patrons took on blank expressions then dutifully tidied up the market. After that they went about their business, completely unaware that anything scary had just happened. They had total amnesia about it.

 I remember thinking, "So that's what death is like." In front of witnesses you're violently killed by thugs who then arrange the corpse so it appears that you died a natural death. The witnesses clean up then, with no memory of the killing, resume their normal lives...until some time in the future when their turn comes. Scary, huh?

Okay, it was just a nightmare, something we all get now and then....but as I was assembling the pictures for this post I began to notice that most of them seemed to confirm the premise of my dream. Almost all of them had a common theme: that death comes not to the fatally sick, but rather to ordinary, healthy people who are minding their own business. It's as if there was a consensus of artists and sculptors of the past that death was murder, something that's done to you with malevolent intent. Look at the pictures. Do you see what I mean?

BEAUTIFUL SANTORINI

INT. CARL'S JR. BURGER RESTAURANT:

AURALYNN: "Hi Eddie!"

EDDIE (VO): Auralynn! Hi! Hey, you're not gonna take a swing at me again, are ya'?"

AURALYNN: "Oh, I was just kidding when I did that. I didn't hurt you did I?"

EDDIE (VO): No, no, I'm fine. Hey, can I interest you in a burger? It's grilled to perfection and comes with tomato, onions and leafy lettuce. A tasty flavor treat...whaddaya say?"

AURALYNN (VO): No thanks. I'm not, er...into Carl's burgers."

AURALYNN: "Say, what are those pictures on the wall?"

EDDIE (VO): "I dunno. 'Just restaurant art."

AURALYNN (VO): "Wait a minute. Those are pictures of Santorini, one of the Greek islands! That town is beautiful. Oh, I'd give anything to go there."

EDDIE (VO): "Yeeeeeah....but look at that hill. What if you walked all the way down to the bottom then realized you left your wallet in your room?"

AURALYNN: "Well, you'd have to climb back up again. You 'gotta make some sacrifices if you want to live in a beautiful place."

EDDIE (VO): "Yeah, but...yikes! Those stairs look dangerous. What if you fell?"

AURALYNN: "Dangerous? Hmmm...hey, Eddie...what if someone was murdered there?"

EDDIE (VO): "Murdered?? You've gotta be kidding."

AURALYNN (VO): "No, look at the pictures. Cliffs and precipices everywhere. If an evil person wanted you dead...well, all it would take is a push."

EDDIE (VO): "Naaaaaaaw! Evil people don't go to places like Santorini."

AURALYNN: "Sure they do. They must. Here, I'll look it up on the internet."

EDDIE (VO): "And while you do that, I'll do justice to the rest of this delicious burger."

AURALYNN: "Okay, here it is. August 4, 2008: a chef in one of those fancy island restaurants went berserk and beheaded his girlfriend. When the police came up he threw the dripping, bloody head into their car, hijacked it, and ran over two doctors while he was trying to make his getaway."

AURALYNN: "What are you doing? Are you throwing that burger away? Why? I thought you were hungry!"

EDDIE (VO): "(Gulp!) I don't feel so good..."

CARICATURE LESSONS BY THE MASTERS

If you're interested in caricature then this post should boost you up into hog heaven. It's a chance to study three brilliant caricatures almost side by side with similar photos of the live subject,which in this case is.......me.

This first one (above) is by John Kricfalusi.  

Here's (above) the caricature face, close up.  I have an ugly black pancreas clinging to the back of my head, a shovel nose, not even the semblance of a chin, dog ears, and big hairy warts.

Here's (above) the real me. No shovel nose but...I hate to admit it....the caricature looks more like me than the photo. Geez! It's spooky how a drawing can beat photography at this sort of thing. 

Here's (above) a caricature by Mike Fontanelli. The back of the head is so big that it needs a brace. The forehead is almost non-existent.

Here's (above) the proof that I have a forehead and, c'mon.....the back of the head isn't all that large. Sigh! Even so, I have to admit that Mike nailed me. A good caricature can take big liberties.

Above, another one by John. John has a theory that the best caricatures always provoke a "Yooooou f---er!" response from the subject. That's definitely how I felt, when I wasn't laughing. At least he gave me some male assets. 

Haw! I'm guessing that the tiny cup and straw (above0 was influenced by the way my kid used to draw me. I love the soft, leathery upper lip, which is weighted down by buck teeth.

Now I ask you...do I (above) have a leathery lip? Hmmmmm....maybe I do. Anybody out there have some lip starch?

SECRET LIVES OF THE GREAT AUTHORS

If you know someone who's in the hospital, or who's about to take a long flight somewhere, you could do worse than give them one of the books you see here. Nothing relieves boredom like gossip, and no gossip is more satisfying than gossip about the writers and artists who are held up as good examples to the rest of us.

I'm in a funk right now...no special reason, it just happens once in a while...and I'm reading "Secret Lives of Great Writers" to cheer myself up. I'm happy to report that it's working. Knowing that J.D. Salinger drank his own urine, and that Sylvia Plath had bi-polar disorder somehow makes me feel better, why I don't know.

Plath sounds like a monster. Her father was vilified in her famous poem "Daddy," but there's no evidence that he was anything worse than a little distant. He was a respected professor and etymologist, and author of a book called "Bumblebees and Their Ways." He died when Sylvia was only eight. She was so broken up over it at the time that she vowed never to speak to God again.

The story of how she met her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, is hilarious. Plath says she met him at a student party. Ted was a swaggering, macho-kind of guy and after only a few minutes of conversation he kissed her on the mouth and ripped off her hair band in a savage display of desire. Poor Ted was probably feeling good about himself at that point, but little did he know that he had one of the world's foremost man-haters in his arms.  She liked him well enough, but not to be outdone, she "bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face." Their stormy marriage miraculously lasted seven years.

T. S. Elliot is described as a prankster who made liberal use of whoopee cushions and exploding cigars. Tolkien was a famously bad driver who frequently drove in the wrong direction on one-way streets. He'd attempt to ram other vehicles and believed that you could "Charge 'em and they scatter."

Toward the end of his life Sartre recanted virtually the entire foundation of his philosophy.  He said, " I talked about it [despair] because it was being talked about; it was fashionable.....I've never experienced despair, nor seen it as a quality that could be mine." De Beauvoir disavowed her old lover's admission, calling it "the senile act of a turncoat."

Emily Dickinson was so reclusive that she forced doctors to examine her from behind a closed door. William Burroughs shot his wife while playing a game of William Tell.

Is all this true? I don't know, but these stories are making me well again. 

AURALYNN LENDS ME A BOOK

EXT. CARL'S JR.:

EDDIE (VO): "Good burger, eh? Now can I see the books you brought?"

EDDIE: "Holy Mackerel! You're lending me all these!?

AURALYNN: "I knew you'd like them. Look at the bottom one first, that's my favorite."

EDDIE: "Haw! Like it? I LOVE it! It's hilarious! Look at all those little guys running around on their heads!"

AURALYNN: "On their heads!??? Uh....I think you're holding the book upside down."

He turns the book around.

EDDIE: "Oh, right...okay....I'll just......"

EDDIE: "Alright, I see it now....yeah....here it is....hmmmmmmmmmm......"

EDDIE: "I don't git it."

AURALYNN: "Silly, it's not a joke book. It's a serious art book about the California Surrealists."

EDDIE: "Well in that case, maybe you should get your money back. Look at this picture....

EDDIE (VO): "....That's a Jackson Pollock if I ever saw one, but the book says it was done by somebody named Knud Merrild."

AURALYNN: "Well, yeah. Merrild invented the technique. He did that painting way back in 1942, before Pollock."

EDDIE: "I don't know, Auralynn.....anybody who would call himself 'Nude'......."

AURALYNN: "Er, that's "KNUD." It's a Danish na........"

EDDIE: "Whoa! What's this???!!!"

AURALYNN (VO): "That's The First Hypothesis by Charles Howard. It's considered a masterpiece of American Post-Surrealism. Howard thought the themes that European surrealists painted were too neurotic and sexual. He tried instead to paint a door into a higher consciousness."

EDDIE: "Hawhawhawhaw! Too sexual!? Hawhawhawhaw!!!!!

EDDIE: "Do you know what that hairy thing is on the bottom of the picture?"

AURALYNN: "Yeah, it's a symbol of mortality. Watch out! You don't want to get ketchup  on the book!"

EDDIE: "Haw! Maybe ketchup would improve some of these pictures!!!!!!"

BAM!!!!!!!!!