Saturday, May 16, 2009

The Death List


I thought about death once. My own. The following is the list of the things I'll miss once I am dead, or that I will no longer be able to experience, which appears in Salvation Diary 4, and was compiled in 1990. It is by no means exhaustive:


Death. No more plays by Chekov, books of Henry James, Beethoven symphonies, Cuban women or ladies from Puerto Rico and New York (except for those Skanks on Staten Island), Emerson essays and poems, old Bob Hope movies, and volleyball. No more Michelle Chandler, Haiku poems, Quevedo, rabbits, Playboy (articles), Campbell Soup, Brando movies, Bob Dylan, and algebra. No more Rembrandt, thunder, Canadian women, Cagney movies, and ant encroachments. No more boomerang bombs, calluses, compressed air, El Salvadorian women, Dante, Boogey woogy, Pink Panther films, seasons, Plato, Acetylcoline liberation, iguanas, grammar, national parks and monuments, sandwiches, porcelain, gorillas, Darryl Hannah, leather and lace, radio astronomy, Tanzanian women, veils, H.G. Wells, flies and fog. No more Malagasy women, Kafka, Sepulveda and Roscoe Boulevards, Christmas and everything that goes with it, apples, Hume, mammary glands, Monet and mosquitoes. No more Fonda movies (Henry or Jane, you can keep Peter), lycanthrophy, British (Kay Parker, Sara Jane Hamilton, Diana Rigg, and Linda Thorson notably) and Brazilian women, The Beatles, elves, sneezes, tugboats, otters, baths, kazoos, jellyfish, Goethe, macadamia nuts, doors, Ray Bradbury stories, saturated fat, nosebleeds, Yeats, Vladimir Horowitz, Abbot and Costello, Kierkegaard, Danish women, airplanes, health insurance, legumes, newspapers, xylophones, marathon running, llamas, Hallmark cards for all occasions, Buster Keaton films, Yazoo river rides, Schultz, Dylan Thomas, retrograde motion, operas, Salinger books, salt, income tax, resonance, Venezuelan women, Parmesan cheese, dolphins, basketball, M&Ms, diets, latitude, lemons, gamma globulin, kumquats, servomechanisms, Joanna Storm and Spencer Tracy movies, porcupines, curry, fatigue, cottage cheese, Thoreau, Cole Porter, Nat King Cole, termites, poker, sonic booms, rain, Lzaak Walton, Ten Years After, anxiety, deodorant, Halley’s Comet, Italian women, and fishing. No more ice cream, Dostoevsky, evaporation, skyscrapers, sky, pressure, football, mushrooms, Schubert, and rust. No more Olivier films, zebras, heartburn, lettuce, Columbus Day, Pink Floyd, avocados, pizzas, Spinoza, ethics, Eskimo and Ethiopian women, giraffes, calories, John Rawls, cosmic rays, Bazooka Bubble Gum, mildew, jackalopes (known to the ancients as “deerbunnies”), Armenian literature, arrests, kaleidoscopes, gelatin, chairs, Sackbut music, love, air pollution, Credence Clearwater Revival, Thomas Hardy, Mahler, chestnuts, Russian women, prairie dogs, unemployment, Jules Verne, samurai comic books, women from the Dominican Republic, AT&T, “Cheers,” humidity, Carl Sandburg, Carl Sagan, pineapples, surrealism, women who get mad at you without telling you why, and magnetic resonance. No more greenhouse effect, libraries, tides, George Santayana, Dana Delany, Costa Rican women, sunburns, water polo, massages, Matisse, and margarine. No Icelandic women for sure. No more Arthur Miller, grapes, the sweet lyrical voice of Janis Joplin. No more equity, Doppler effect, Yukon women, mahogany, furniture, laser light shows, Led Zeppelin, chocolate cream pie, Dupont, earthquakes, indigestion, Laurel and Hardy, bevel gears, Clark Gable films, mineral water, woodpeckers, John Locke, Darwin, Butane lighters, crabs, rapid transit (not that we have it now), Marquez novels, smoke, Mark Twain, fantasies, Australian trips and women, heavy metal hard knacky acid rock music, drug addiction, Renoir, balloons, fables, sauces, Frankl, sailing, Kim Catrall, pheromones, Philippine women and Saudi Arabian women. Say goodbye to echoes, butter, bananas, bagpipe music, prejudice, Jennifer Connelly (who I’m secretly in love with, please don’t tell) and Meg Ryan, Tchaikosky, ping-pong, George C. Scott movies, rockets, orchestras, softball, American Samoan women, elevators, Buddhism, chrysanthemums, enzymes, Twinkies, Doyle, Yosemite National Park, Judith Wright, San Luis Obispo, Ann Marten, perception, stores, Rhodesian women, John O’Hara, making of beds, Paul Schofield movies, the Uncertainty Principle, shrimp, Fritos, morning dew, broccoli, Kayak women, scene design and stage lighting. Astalavista to time, tunnels, and tulips. Sayonara to Steinbeck, pigweeds, Jethro Tull, ballet, fashion, chocolate, beavers, eclipses, Salvation Armies, Janine Turner, Tillich, fireworks, rocks, refrigeration, rainbows, Valentine’s Day, Victoria Jackson, Kim Novak, Carrie Fisher, and Teresa Ganzel. Adios to Oscar Wilde, dreams, Dutch and Flemish women, buses, adenosine triphosphate hydrolysis, Elizabeth Perkins, Joanna Storm, cinnamon, trips to Arizona, Led Zeppelin, idealism, linoleum, irony, fruit, James Ward, blackjack, Scandinavian women, tears, Poe, integrated circuits, Sir Isaac Newton, Jack Nicholson movies, Gabonese women, Herman Melville, instinct, concerts, wallpaper, divorce, Joyce, Byzantine women, law, Hemingway, civil rights, sequoias, Paleolithic art, and rent. Aurevoir to mom, Cheryl, Kari Lynn, Patti, Michelle, Terri, Debbie, Janine, Jan, rubber, and French women, Auf Wiedersehen to Norwegian women, loans, halitosis, George Orwell, scorpions, vegetables, peafowl, Lois Aryes, symphonic poems, plumbing, Isaac Singer, quela, Hesse, limericks, ham, rain forests, Kathleen Sullivan, “Get Smart,” Michelangelo Buonarrotic, heat, geckos, German women, short stories, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” (the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement), Trappists, pepper, Jugs Magazine, Redwood National Park, telescopes, facades, Doritos, Czechoslovakian women, bank holidays, and bikinis. Adieu to crabgrass, jade, Madeline Stowe, Milton, lathes, engines, inflation, fractions, justice, Teresa Ganzel, daisies, fairs, jealousy, The Who, antacids, cellophane, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, microphones, Ukrainian women, satire, Mary Louise Parker, ladybugs, gifts, quadraphonic sound, Synge, Jimmy Stewart movies, Fourth of July’s, amino acid, covalent bonding, and Harold and Maude. Arrivederci to diarrhea, marsupials, swimming, rivers, Scottish women, poetry, pencils, February, Shannon McCullough, hydrogen bombs, education, iodine, miniature golf, lavender, scale, vinyl, plastics, parrots, wheat, Saint Patrick’s Day, civilization, automobiles, Shaw, Pali literature, spring, hats, Emma Thompson, malts, violin music, Hitchcock, films in general, tile, oranges, onions, O’Neill, soup, locusts, television, Persian women, Joyce Carol Oats, Handel, happenings, April, fruit bats, koans, mirrors, pollution, Shakespeare, “Bewitched,” Elizabeth Montgomery, grass, Latin women, women of Mozambique, Nevell Shute novels, wind, cashews, Faulkner, cycles, pistachios, Sartre, Rachel Ashley, cherries, elephants, Arabian music, Christianity, credit cards, Sophie B Hawkins, Equatorial Guianian women, body temperature, sex, emotion, ducks, hate, mucilage, color, Irish women, liberty, lizards, lubrication, cold, Gallup polls, Tracy Winn, luminescence, Gustave Moreau, Mongolian women, Inge, consciousness, pumps, oak trees, sculpture, DNA mingling, Strindberg, Voltaire, Tennessee Williams, gasoline, Indonesian women, laxatives, metaphysics, harvest moons, Ruth Gordon, Rita Hayward, lakes, William James, Kant, Japanese women, Goodyear, blimps, memory, wolves, art, Thornton Wilder, cable television, cysts, ethnic groups, Cyndi Wood, fire, checkers, the Rolling Stones, Bach, euchre, Finnish women, college, tea, Joseph Conrad novels, “Green Acres,” Solzenitsyn, the Blues, Terri Garr, exobiology, thirst, dogs, carbohydrates, flannel, Cambodian women, aleatory music, church, tamales, enchiladas, sparrows, orchids, South African women, ventilation, Neil Simon, Mary McDonnell, picnics, nagging, shunsho, parakeets, Schuler, energy, fear, blood clotting, landscape painting, Cassandra Peterson, John Houston films, Hawaiian women, land, tacos, philosophy, ships, Moria Kelly, Uccelo paintings, quantum mechanics, laundry, snow, Ugandan women, keys, grease, metal, Frost, impressionism, May, Marina Sirtis, forests, nuts, radio, obscenity, volcanoes, Yugoslavian women, fountains, Liszt, allergies, flowers, roads, Olympic Games, vibration, Amazon women of the moon, farce, trips to Fiji, chivalry, ornaments, soap, Swiss women, Virgil, baseball, saving and loan associations, pulses, alcoholism, dry cleaning, Balinese music, Tawny Little, feedback, Chinese women, skepticism, obsidian, perfume, backache, epics, coconuts, plaid, sap, oceans, school, disease, anthologies, dachshunds, Mimi Rogers, friends, coughing, Richard Wagner, aristocracy, fish, Chilean women, rhinos, peas, smut, monopoly games, Greek women, melons, natural gas, classical gas, Marisa Tomei, Kelper’s laws, horses, pearls, smog, pancakes, Jung, helicopters, Malaysian women, Islam, pens, symmetry, Katie Couric, Portuguese women, masks, Victor Hugo, Korean women, streetcars, whales, giger counters, motion sickness, geometric problems of antiquity, “Star Trek,” and “Star Trek, the Next Generation,” Jazz, mint, Dali, electricity, Schumann, organ music, sports, croquet, bankruptcy, comedy, tournaments, Rumanian women, wax, bias, felt, days, bugs, dandelions, sugar, pears, scurvy, belligerency, excretion, light, Kenyan women, “The Invaders,” gin rummy, Taija Rae, George Kaufman, Indian women, bears, women of Hong Kong, Nietzsche, paring of finger and toe nails, haircuts, liberalism, Vulcan and Betaziod women and some Klingon babes (and let’s not forget those Orion Slave Girls (they’re so green!)), horseradish, potatoes, Swedish women, silt, unions, marching, June, gophers, Picasso, Syrian women, verbs, harmonies, the Milky Way, interest, genetics, Sinclair Lewis, music, learning, Gaelic literature, food, ivy, marriage, melodies, Mexican women, penguins, value, Swift, fasts, lightening, motels, games, Hungarian women, chamber music, fever, carrots, eggnog, walruses, beds, lobsters, Israeli women, glass, linen, skywriting, soybeans, police, Transylvanian women, groups, Las Vegas women, mistletoe, hail, Paganini, weather, incense, liver, Mozart, intuition, Guatemalan women, plays, Virginia Woolf, gardens, muffins, logic, Lithuanian women, hamsters, limits, water skiing, halls, lotteries, cholesterol, arithmetic, denial, Ethiopian women, Ferris wheels, Flaubert, envy, athlete’s foot, dandruff, attorneys, Easter, cartoons, erections (or lack thereof), Natalie Wood and Bogart movies, court, Egyptian women, Chopin, astrophysics, barbeques, acne, waltzes, ballads, Joe Cocker, watercolors, art deco, cheese, family, American women (despite the Guess Who song), customs, evil, Three Musketeers Bars, greed, astronomy, depression, equations, dance, chess, nights, enamel, wintergreen, almonds, cake, waves, clouds, humor, cats, hygiene, Ionesco, milk, Jack Benny, labor, inertia, mantras, mustard, Jamaican women, nationalism, itches, Hegel, Homer, handball, kangaroos, kites, water, weaving, warblers, nonconformists, culture, boats, drainage, factories, corn, debt, anecdotes, detective stories, education, engraving, drama, August, dates, celery, eating, wood, Vonnegut, bowling, cloves, walnuts, Kubrick films, horror stories, literature in general, knots, language, mufflers, numbers, smell, pantomime, Rachmaninoff, rice, riddles, Saxon women, silk, Van Gogh, Christina Applegate, Rabelais, photocopying, theater, Judaism, hedonism, hummingbirds, moonlight, internal-combustion, hair, women of New Zealand, Anne Archer, Bob Hoskins, hotels, mysteries, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Thurber, science fiction, newts, jeeps, hallucinations, hiccups, motivation, vacuum cleaners, reading, writing, Nigerian women, miniskirts (or lack thereof), waterfalls, macaroni, mountains, Ibsen, Desiree Cousteou, nihilism, identity, money, koalas, honey, noise, turtles, tomatoes and toads. Farewell to laughing and crying, peanuts, pears, and pianos. So long to sleep and waking up, screws, combs, Kickapoo Indian women, names, meat, government, animals, touch, tables, tulips, telephones, tempera, Tennyson, pies, plants, personality, songs, parody, Susie, Bobbie and Shannon, terns, and relativity.
And pinochle.
Lists.

And that's just off the top of my head!
Also women in general (I can do without the men).
Girls too.

No comments:

Post a Comment