I Want to Live Forever Today

Painting With Knives in My Back, Lilacs, and a Dinosaur 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16"

Last April, during a long drive, I listened to a book on tape: Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich. It was the right book for me at the right time. I found myself nodding throughout, and sometimes declaring out loud, “Yes, that’s right,” and “Absolutely!”. She covered several of my own cultural concerns and criticisms. Apparently those of many others too (it’s a bestseller). For instance, I have long believed doctor and dentist visits to be more ritual than effective medicine. Because my heart sometimes beats like a Tom Waits syncopation, I used to be on a regimen of drugs that have side effects that could kill me. I was on tenterhooks when taking them. Cardiologists continued my prescriptions unchanged, although my heart went back to normal sinus rhythm while my blood pressure and pulse rate resembled that of the healthiest person who had ever lived. I’ve written about the irony here, while my mind was suffering the dissonance for far too long. Whether I like it or not, there’s a me inside who better be ready to die. I seek a path to take me there with some dignity and beautiful acceptance.

She ended her book with hope for the godless in a world where, depressingly, self worship has become the norm. Pointing out a way to kill the self to welcome death without fear, she alluded to recent studies on psychedelic drugs and their positive effects on the dying. Controlled doses of psilocybin to see the oneness all around and replace, or at least embellish, an outdated authoritative god franchise that made promises to the suffering long before the invention of airplanes and antibiotics. She never mentioned Zen Buddhism, and probably for good reason. The sick and dying are in no position to undergo an intense discipline toward satori. Chew on a psychedelic mushroom and instantly grasp the meaning/un-meaning of squirrels. Die with the dignity and unmentionability of a daisy. Take your Soma pills until it’s time to go to the phosphorous factory and fertilize the grass.

I painted this picture with intense lower back pain the morning after the long drive. Faith is great when you’re feeling good, though I would have preferred an IV drip of morphine and a psilocybin cracker to stop the pain.