Death Porn

Yes, I'll be pole dancing with the pillar of death, stripping down to my soul, dangling my scraps of life as they fall away. And you can watch.

So I looked up Pillar of Death, because, what the f*ck am I talking about? and before long I stumbled on a video of a twin meeting his twin for the first time. I cried. yes indeed. I will never have that experience and yet I felt it as if it were mine. It has nothing to do with pillars (even though there is some kind of game that features pillars of death), but emo is emo. 

Recently I saw a wonderful flick called The Forty Year Old Version, about a brilliant and under-appreciated Black playwright. A White critic complains that her work isn't Black enough; it needs more hardship, poverty, pain. So she begins to rap about Poverty Porn. This reminded me of the refrain of the disabled: enough with inspiration porn. We are not necessarily heroes or victims, and we don't always overcome, and it's not just about overcoming, and there is a lot of stuff that we just can't overcome.  

Like Death. You saw that coming, didn't you? Do you see death coming? I thought I did. I even spent a year pretending and planning for it in A Year to Live workshop at my Village Zendo. Before that I was drawn to people on the edge of life. Famously I worked with a couple on the eve of one partner's death from HIV. We recorded the session and presented it at conferences, to teach about how to allow difficult conversations, and my friends teased me that it was my death tour. It was a heck of a session--talk of love and forgiveness and grief, stuff that doesn't get said until we are really on the edge. 

Since it became clear that I'm actually dying, people have thanked me for teaching them how to live. Sometimes I feel bitter about that, because of the obvious cost to me. But I get it. You need me. You need to get close to mortality. Zen is very clear about that. Life becomes vivid when you really apprehend the end of you. 

In the evening while I eat dinner and for at least an hour after, I watch TV. I want to be manipulated, want to feel things that I can't experience for real. Lately I've been watching super heroes, Jessica Jones for example, and every time someone underestimates her and she slams them against a wall, I get a little zing, a hit of revenge. Ok, I'm not going to march to the Capital and terrorize Congress; it's just a little taste, a little hero porn. Is it wrong? 

The only danger with porn is that it can separate you from the thing itself. You can feel the effects of poverty and injustice and then feel exhilarated when the problem is overcome, even though you didn't actually fix the problem and millions of people are still disenfranchised, unrecognized, unsupported. 

But the problem of death won't be fixed, won't be overcome, won't be mastered. You will be intimate with it eventually. So I don't mind if you watch. Live and learn. 

January 2021