« The Great Divide | Main | New Traffic »
November 27, 2006
My Eternal Parking Spot
Recently I read an interesting editorial by Christopher Kimball in Cook's Illustrated.
Having said that, let me now break this thought to explain why, apropos the Good Rabbi's discussion of certifying gayness in the wake of my bath salts post, reading Cook's Illustrated does not increase my gayness coefficient:
First, I claim Cook's Illustrated under the food exemption.
Second, I claim Cook's Illustrated under the Emeril Lagasse/Mario Batali clause: anything they do is recognized under established Man Law as not gay.
My overall gayness position is thus unchanged by my admission of reading Cook's Illustrated.
Anyway, where the hell was I? There simply must have been some point to this post, right? Have we in this blog lost all ability to communicate except in that most crude, meandering and primitive fashion characteristic of the Oakland Raiders fan-Oh right! We were talking about Christopher Kimball's editorial.
Kimball talked about his decision to stake out the place where he will be buried and buy a headstone. At first this struck me as the most gruesome kind of exercise. But his whole point (see, Kimball can keep his eye on the ball; no doubt about that) was that organizing your position for the sweet hereafter is a good way of forcing a kind of rough thinking about how you will spend the rest of the time that you do have. If you define the end point, I suppose the idea goes, it brings into high relief any fuzzy thinking about what lies between.
I'm thinking about adding this to my emotional and intellectual toolkit for navigating the rest of my course through this cruel and crazy world. (That makes three tools in my box.*) I am going to put some serious thought into my eventual eternal parking spot. Being what I am, much of my thinking will be guided by considerations of terroir. It would somehow represent a fitting completion of the circle of life if my corpse one day fertilized some pinot noir vines somewhere. (I can't imagine what Robert Parker would have to say about the result, but it might run something like this: "Hints of sandalwood, cognac...no, no, armagnac and poire William, a notion of Cuban cigar tobacco, Old Spice and foie gras... with lingering notes of simmering insanity on the back end. Rating: 42").
I need to determine my endpoint. This year shattered any residual illusions of youth that there isn't going to be one. So now I'll find my spot, plot my course and buckle up for what will undoubtedly be a twisted ride in between. Any ideas for my final parking spot?
*One of the other tools is My Dinner with Andre, which helps to reassure me that, whatever it is that is wrong with me, it is at least not completely unprecedented. The final tool comes from Hirokazu Kore-Eda's After Life. This brilliant film was rooted in a simple premise: that your death is followed by a brief interlude where you select the one memory of your life on earth that you will take with you to the hereafter. I do believe that giving some serious thought to this question while you are still on this earth will help you gain some real field position in your drive to figure out who you are. Which is important: if you don't know who you are you can't really know where you want to go.
Posted by dag at November 27, 2006 7:38 PM
Comments
I'd like to be placed at a desk at the IRS. They wouldn't be able to tell the difference between me and a regular employee, and maybe my estate will continue to earn a paycheck like lots of the other dinosaurs there.
Seriously, I've often said I'd like to have myself buried in a nice spot that overlooks a beautiful vineyard. Of course, in the end, it almost doesn't matter, because whereever you choose will most likely wind up underneath the lingerie section of a Wal-mart super centre one of these days. How's that for the sweet hereafter?
Posted by: The Good Rabbi ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://aging-disgracefully.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 27, 2006 11:51 PM