I had a completely different idea for my 4th blog post on Sturnella Neglected than what I'm going to be writing this evening. My original intention was to tell you fine folks a story about a bear-sized German who drank Goldschlager straight from a bottle and wandered around all day with golden lips. That in and of itself isn't too entertaining, but things get interesting once you consider the fact that he flew airplanes after drinking the shit. It was at my time in flight school when I knew this crazy bastard. For all I know he was the guy flying our 757 from Atlanta to Ft. Myers, FL. That story and many more are the subjects of a narrative (possibly a novel that will most likely go straight to ebook if anywhere at all) I've been writing about my single semester at an aviation college. Don't worry, there'll likely be more about this to come.
As I was mapping out how this post was going to go, I was waylaid by a concept that affects my consciousness almost daily. I have this desire to write something significant, to create some "homespun immortality" as Chuck Palahniuk puts it in Diary. I'm not sure why that is, honestly. I'm not really afraid of death, at least not conceptually. As far as I can tell death is the final end of the self and the only guarantee any of us are ever given in this life. I suppose that I simply loath the thought of not being remembered after I'm gone. The whole feeling is really quite selfish and arrogant, but it forms this drive to create in me. Yes, I want to express myself, but more than that I want my expression to count for something.
The whole idea of literary immortality makes me think of my grandparents who died a few years ago. They were both great people and lived very long and fulfilling lives, but once my cousins, my brother, and I are gone no one will even really know that they existed. Contrast this with William S. Burroughs (whose birthday is coming up soon, by the way), a man who pickled himself with morphine and heroine and shot his wife in a party game gone awry. Old Bill is hardly the role model my grandparents were, but his memory will live on in some vestige until the sun swallows the earth.
It makes me want to write down everything I knew about my grandparents, my parents, my family and friends, to put it all down in print and then publish it by myself so that those people at least have a shot at eternity. It's a crazy impulse, I know, but one that can hardly be foreign to any writer. We're so painfully aware that we're made only of fragile flesh and that someday everyone who even knew us will be gone. If you haven't imbedded your words into the cultural cannon, then who will remember you?
Like I said, the whole thing is arrogant and irrational as hell. Of course we all want greatness and immortality like that. We all want to be Hemmingway. We all want to be Julius Caesar for that matter. It simply ain't gonna' happen that way for the most part, especially not in this fractious society we live in today. The best course of action would be to live a long and happy life, or a short and intense one if that's what you're into. Basically get yours and treat everyone at least decently. After all, what does the memory of you matter to actual you who's decayed into dust somewhere? Exactly. No matter at all.
Speaking of decency and all that, if you're reading this and you want to leave a comment then go ahead! Make fun of me, I can take it.
I've got to get home and work on this narrative I was talking about, so I'm going to leave now and clock out. G'night!
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