how do you like me now, death

there is little doubt that we are dying the moment we enter this earth.  some of us have dreams that our technology will kill death dead, like that great line by john donne, 'and death, thou shalt die,' when we upload our minds into large everlasting computers or we manipulate our genetic code to tweak or turn off the mechanisms that age, and finally, kill us.

good luck to all that.  i'm of a mind that death is necessary for life.  you can't have one without the other.  the knowledge of our death, real knowledge & not some abstract 'some day a long time from now' kind of thinking can quicken the breath, make these moments of our life beautiful.  death is the mother of beauty, said another poet.  i believe that with all my mind & heart.

& yet, death is ugly.  when it strikes the pain is sharp, deep & unbearable.  even tho i know, & even accept my own eventual death, it fucking sucks.  fuck you, death.

i was punched in the gut twice this week for death's quick work.  the journalist elizabeth wurtzel died on 1/7/20 at the age of 52 from breast cancer.  wurtzel was one of the voices of my generation x when she published her memoir prozac nation in 1994.  she became a cause celebre because, in part, she was lovely, outspoken about her demons: addiction & mental illness, with a keen intelligence that brokered no shit.  we are the same age.

the second death this week happened today.  neil peart, master drummer & keen lyricist for the canadian band rush, died a couple days ago after a 3 1/2 year struggle with brain cancer at age 67.  i have my issues with the music of rush but i think the three members are all first-rate musicians & peart was a very great drummer.  he wrote all the band's lyrics & his mastery of rock&roll wordsmithing & drumming earned him the sobriquet The Professor.  peart was a guide for my own efforts of writing lyrics when i was 12-13.  & today i learned that he authored several non-fiction books too based on his love of motorcycling the open roads.

when i texted a friend this afternoon about peart's death my friend, an avid motorcyclist, wrote me, in shock about learning peart's death, that he was just listening to the album 2112 today & was on peart's website last night reading about the drummer's adventures on his cycle.   

death works suddenly with a finality that one cannot avoid.  i don't know. . .as i texted my motorcycle driving friend death makes me want 'to double up on life: party on, brother for one day soon we too will be gone.'  i don't find that news morbid.  instead, knowing that i will die charges me with life because life is so precious & short. 

i have accepted my death.  even if i don't like death.  & death will always win.  even as i love life.  that is why i shall praise.