Today I used the Siddharta Tarot.
As you might guess, it’s a buddhism-themed deck. Sadly, I’m not that well-versed into buddhism yet to be able to say how accurate it is, it is real nice though.
Today’s reading calls for forgiveness for the woes of the past… which is definitely in line with the trend lately.
SO GUESS WHO’S SHOWERHEAD BROKE.
I didn’t get hurt and it was old anyways. I’ve been living here for five years and lord knows how long before then it saw use (it came with the house).
The problem wasn’t so much the breaking though, the problem was that the showerhead had like a buffer filter sort of thing, a small pocket between the hose and the head with some green plastic pebbles that I assume were there to catch calcium deposits and such.
So of fucking course when it broke, it broke at the spot with the pebbles so I had to deal with annoying caltrops while trying to shower with a raw hose.
Just like in my youth, and considering how hot both hose and pipes got in carnival season, even more so.
In the shuffle of all this, the news that David Lynch died came up.
I think about death a lot, I always feel like I was lucky to get the upbringing I had because I was one bad formative day away from having suicidal tendencies. As-is, the worst that has ever happened to me was being jealous of trees, alive and existing but inert… which really is one step away from actual suicidal ideation.
When I say I think about it a lot I don’t mean the self-inflicted variety though. Even before I knew what death was, I remember as like a 3-4 year old I just thought “if people grow taller when they’re adults, maybe people like Simon Bolivar just become so giant you can’t see them!”.
By age 13 I was having constant panic attacks about whether or not I was real. When I was like 15 I was hanging out with some classmates when news came out that some friends of the people I was hanging out with died in a car crash, one of them basically getting their brains spilled out in the process and that was probably the first time where the fragility of the physical stuff that makes you you dawned on me.
Of course cut to a decade of other similar stuff later, I move to Japan living alone isolated from anyone I ever knew and the fear of dying in my apartment and nobody ever finding out makes me grapple with all this stuff again, not helped by the fact that people kept dying in those exact circumstances in the building.
And more to the point for today, when I was at my lowest in early 2021 the main thought that crossed my mind was “if I died today, what would I leave others with?”. At that point it was because I was feeling like such scum (tl;dr: the blowout with that one ex-friend that has come up a lot recently, left me taking in way too much blame for myself and kicking myself too hard) that my biggest fear was that I would be remembered negatively if I suddenly died.
It was around this time that I decided that I want to be cremated, with half of my ashes being mixed in the soil of my childhood home where my pets are buried, and half thrown into the Yodo river here in Japan.
Not like I wanted to die, but again… always one step away. Case in point when I got almost run over by a car last year, all I could think of was “oh no, who’s gonna send money to my family?” rather than anything self-preservation-related.
When death became a reality however briefly I was more concerned about others than about myself… and as laudable as that sounds, it made me realize just how deep my lack of self-motivation goes. I knew self-worth was a struggle but damn.
To be honest, if I live my life any specific way it’s in one where I hope people will remember me fondly, not as “Fernando Damas, creator of things” but as “Fernando Damas, dear personal friend”. So it always resonates with me when creators die but they’re remembered more for their humanity than their body of work, or equally in any case.
Before Lynch, I remember last year with Akira Toriyama’s death it struck me how, sure everyone kept bringing up how prolific he was as an author, but also the goofy personal tales, the funny production anecdotes like just forgetting Tien Shin Han existed, and just how down to earth he was in general despite how monumental his legacy.
Also that one interview with Takehiko Inoue where they talk about how Slam Dunk isn’t the be-all end-all of a mangaka’s career and the interviewer pushed them to change the subject.
And the more I think about the whole thing, the more that I grow to admire the late Shigeru Mizuki of Gegege no Kitaro fame. He was contemporary with giants like Osamu Tezuka, Fujiko Fujio, Mitsuteru Yokoyama… basically the whole Gekiga movement. Men that burned themselves to death in the altar or creating things, to their own detriment. And yet Mizuki remained, taking a more steady pace. Where his most famous peers didn’t make it to 70, Mizuki died at age 93, older than the non-Doraemon half of the Fujiko Fujio duo.
So whenever authors die, especially those I know the work of and ESPECIALLY when their personal side is so beloved, my brain ends up digging all the thoughts about mortality which feels… weirdly comforting.
Let me explain.
It’s nice to remember that if mental faculties go to hell at around age 60 that means I still have 30 years of lucidity if I’m lucky, which takes off a LOT of pressure from myself… and that’s assuming I make it to 60, and to be honest growing up in an era where so many people even younger than me died suddenly from insecurity-related things, I currently feel lucky if I make it to 40, let alone 60, let alone 78 like Lynch.
And really, is there any age at which you won’t be considered taken too soon? You could die at age 104 and those that love you would say you deserved to live to 106 and more.
It’s also just sobering in general to remember that for as big as your problems might feel, we’re all insignificant bags of meat riding on a rock in the void. It makes even the biggest of hurdles feel small and more manageable sometimes.
I don’t know when my number will be up. I obviously don’t want to die, my survival instincts are still where they should be (even if not for myself) to a worrying extent, but I also don’t want to live in pressure of what I’ll leave behind to the point that I don’t enjoy the ride while it lasts, I want to live a life where, when it’s my turn, people will clap for what was and what could’ve been as I take my bow and exit the stage.
Also, you know, it’s fun to see the contrast between when Lynch dies and when that one Insurance CEO got killed. If nothing else it’s good to live a life where people don’t start singing DING-DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD.
I cannot feasibly mourn David Lynch the human in a respectable way because he wasn’t someone I knew personally, he was someone I knew as a creator which is not the same, and while Death is the ultimate thing that everyone (save some psychopaths or when it happens to some psychopaths) can empathize with on the deepest level, I feel like the best thing I can do as someone that only knew him that way is to clap for one hell of a performance (especially when said performance includes that personal element) and hope when my turn comes I can be anywhere close to that level.
Until then, I’m going to enjoy the ride and spread kindness compulsively, and if I can make the ride longer and by extension spread love for a longer time, that would be neat.
Sorry if with the lead-up you expected more about Lynch, but if you think about it, using the opportunity to open up about throughts on mortality IS a fittingly Lynchian way to honor him.