The inevitability of mortality

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I realized, around the age of seven, that I was going to die someday. I spent some awful sleepless nights around that time. I assured myself that, by the time I was an adult, I’d have figured out a way around it.

 

 

Well, I’m fifty-five years old, and I still haven’t figured out a damned thing.

 

 

What a pity that we have to die. What? You don’t like me mentioning it? I know. I don’t like thinking about it.

 

 

But I think it bears thinking about.

 

 

Here are some important philosophers on the topic of the inevitability of death:

 

 

From “Through The Looking Glass,” by Lewis Carroll:

 

 

 

`Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), `you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.'  

 

 

`And what does it live on?'  

 

 

`Weak tea with cream in it.'  

 

 

A new difficulty came into Alice's head. `Supposing it couldn't find any?' she suggested.  

 

 

`Then it would die, of course.' 

 

 

`But that must happen very often,' Alice remarked thoughtfully. 

 

 

`It always happens,' said the Gnat. 

 

 

 

Then there’s Bart Simpson: “You gotta get murdered someday.”

 

 

 

But here’s my very favorite, which actually comforts me a little, taken from Ogden Nash’s “Carnival of the Animals”:

 

 

 

At midnight in the museum hall,
The fossils gathered for a ball.
There were no drums or saxophones,
But just the clatter of their bones,
A rolling, rattling carefree circus,
Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.
Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.
Amid the mastodonic wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil.
“Cheer up, sad world,” he said, and winked.
“It’s kind of fun to be extinct.”

 

 

 

I certainly hope so. I expect to be extinct for a very long time.

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Chapter books and picture books

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Last summer, my assistant Ezra said: “Are you going to the bookstore at lunch today? Because I want to go with you.”

 

 

“Why?” I said. “You want a book? I can pick it up for you.”

 

 

“No,” he said with certainty. “It’s the new Game of Thrones book. It’s the first one in six years. I want to buy it myself.”

 

 

So we went to the (now defunct) Borders Bookstore, and I turned him loose.

 

 

He was immensely happy, and I left him alone with his prize. I wandered off to the “graphic novel” section, and browsed for a few minutes, and rejoined him shortly with a big black-and-white Superman anthology. “What’s that?” he said suspiciously.

 

 

“It’s an anthology of some comic books from my childhood,” I said happily.

 

 

He looked down on me (seriously: he was at least five inches taller than me) with disdain.

 

 

He was buying a chapter book and I was buying a picture book.

 

 

Well, so what? I love my picture books. Some of them remind me of my childhood, which is reason enough. Some are artistic / beautiful, which is reason enough again. Some are profound and moving (like “Maus”). Some are just for fun, like my comic anthologies, or my volumes of Lynda Barry and George Herriman and Edward Gorey.

 

 

To quote Charles Dodgson (from - surprise! - a chapter book!):

 

 

 “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'”

 

 

Amen, sister.

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