MikeyOpp.com

Despite all attempts by doctors and worried friends to ruin my summer, based on their perception of how one should rehabilitate following a car accident (read: some idiot blew a stop sign and hit me on my bike), I have actually managed to heal enough to take two vacations this June. Of course, taking vacations oftentimes includes making tremendous sacrifices. For example, in order to attend a friend’s wedding and to visit Alaska, in the span of ten days, I have recently had the “fortune” of experiencing eight flights, one flight cancellation, and a seven hour delay in Chicago’s famous O’Hare Airport (a.k.a. “Little Nuremberg (a.k.a. anti-Disneyland (a.k.a. “The unhappiest place on Earth”))). For a self-proclaimed fan of flying, even this has been a bit much for me.

The dilapidation of the experience that is American Aviation is astounding to me. In the late nineties, I often complained about the totalitarian nature of airport law (namely that you immediately agree to give up every single constitutional right you are supposedly granted as a citizen of the U.S.A. the moment you enter any airport). But as I write this column in the waning months of the worst Presidency in the history of our fine country, I am actually quite shocked to be writing that the situation with airlines and airports has actually gotten worse than even my pessimistic mind could ever imagine.

But this column, surprisingly, is actually not about airplanes, airlines, nor the degradation of the flying experience. Even though the introductory paragraph would seem to imply that as the topic for this discussion, I am far too tired of complaining about airlines to actually embark on another tirade about my hatred for them. Suffice it to say that the airlines have finally beaten me with their constant abuse and this is exemplified by the fact that when I fly, I now swallow said abuse with the same sense of powerless indignity that any second class citizen uses to suffocate their inner rage against an authority too powerful to defeat. One last thing; I also hate airport bathrooms because they reek of a distinct hybrid of men’s cologne and feces. This unique scent truly disgusts me.

I want to talk about life. More accurately, I want to discuss death. And I want to discuss how the two connect and what this means to me. You see every time I fly, regardless of how happy or unhappy I am with my life, I immediately begin to think and fantasize about what it would be like to die in a massive commercial airline crash. I envision different scenarios, and each one plays out like a perfectly scripted movie scene in my head. Some of them are more melodramatic than others, but the bottom line is that there is nothing quite like a trip on an airplane to make the control freak in me aware of just how much control over my own fate I actually give up when I elect to travel.

The most recent flight-crash-day-dream I had occurred about ten minutes ago. This was right before I shuffled back from the rear of the airplane that I am currently sitting on and where I am currently typing this column. This day dream took place in the coffin sized bathroom I just visited. In this scene, I pictured a sudden lurching that feels like the feeling you feel when the elevator finally eases its decent from the top of the sears tower in Chicago (or any other similarly tall skyscraper).

In my daydream, I immediately sensed that something was wrong, but before I had time to settle my nerves, I heard the ding of the fasten seatbelt alert, and then the loudspeaker came on, and the pilot wasted no time in saying, “Flight attendants immediately take your seats and prepare for a code ____!” The pilot’s voice was not calm, and he made no effort to mask his stupefying fear induced by the reality that the airplane he is in charge of was going to plummet from the sky and into some form of landmass (or ocean, depending on your flight). I elected to stay in the bathroom, where I could hear people screaming things like “Oh my god!” and “We’re all going to die!” and I began to laugh at how absurd it is for people experiencing trauma to announce a play by play account of their own inner monologue. I guess even in my day dreams, I am a callous asshole.

I don’t think that I am obsessed with death, because I think that an obsession is an unhealthy preoccupation, and I would not label my feelings towards death as unhealthy. After all, my life is full of uncertainties, and I live this life in a world that is chock full of massive uncertainties as well, so focusing on the one and only constant that I can truly depend on, namely, the fact that I will someday die, does not seem like an unhealthy preoccupation to me, but rather, like something safe for me to focus on and therein properly sculpt the course of my life. By thinking about death, I am able to better live my life!

I would like to paraphrase an email that I sent to my brother, about two years ago: ‘“When I am happy and I feel connected to other people, I am not afraid of dying, but when I am unhappy and I feel alone, I am usually very afraid of dying.”’ I think this self-reflective-analytical statement to my brother speaks volumes about the kind of person I am. It explains why I am usually forging connections and communicating with strangers and friends in order to keep myself feeling upbeat and happy, instead of wallowing in my own head space, alone, which is, of course, the writer’s archetypal curse.

The second to last column I wrote (issue #80) was all about moving to Iowa, because ever since I was hit by a car, I have decided to throw caution to the wind, as well as my loyalty to acting normal in a world that I find quite insane, and to chase my dream of writing for a living (as opposed to living to write). But now, a seemingly coincidentally and somewhat ironic event has occurred. Within three weeks of my decision to move to Iowa City, Iowa, this same city has been ransacked by biblical flooding and now lies in a state of bedlam. The city’s river has flooded to an unprecedented level, and the University is unclear as to when it can reopen and begin to operate normally.

“Yo God! Hey, it’s me, Mike. You know, that guy who constantly takes you for granted, the one who takes your name in vain at least six times a week, um, you know, the same guy that stays up late at night debating your existence, sometimes denying you just to play devil’s advocate. Yeah, that Mike, the one who prays to you whenever he’s really truly “about to shit his pants scared” therein proving what he really thinks about your existence and powers…Well, anyway, you got something you want to tell me? Cause, uh, no offense, but when I declared that I was moving to Portland, you didn’t have Mt. Hood erupt, and when I decided to take a sojourn to Ithaca, you didn’t make that city collapse upon itself into one of its many gorges, or anything crazy like that. And as for Pittsburgh, well, between you and me, you know that Pittsburgh is basically a man-made natural disaster, so there wasn’t anything you could have done to scare me away from that place. So, uh, what’s the deal with the whole “Biblical Flooding of Iowa City?”

I’m just kidding. I don’t actually think that this coincidence concerning my future home could actually be related to me; it’s just a natural disaster, and I’m not scared of floods, just tornados…But flying on this airplane and thinking about the Mid-Western Floods has made me think even more about death than usual.

I am going to die. And so are you. And anyone else that you ever meet is going to die as well; they may die before you do, at the same time as you, or after you. So my death could occur right now, en route to Anchorage, Alaska, and as a writer, this would be splendidly clever, since my death would coincide with the demise of this as-of-yet unpublished article, making this entire column intentionally and unintentionally ironic, for the record…

But back to death. So in my head, I’d like to think that a bunch of people would show up to my funeral and say things like, “Man, Mike was doing just fine until early May. Then the shit just poured itself on real thick. First that car slams into him, ruining the majority of his summer, but then, just as things were finally looking up, and just as he was all set to finally visit Alaska, a long time dream of his, BAM! His plane just fell out of the sky, and that’s it. He’s gone.” And then maybe someone would cry, who isn’t my mother, because that’s to be expected, and that singular non-maternal cry starts a chain reaction of emotional outpouring by all in attendance to tribute and honor me, “that zany reclusive writer who wasn’t actually reclusive at all, and who never shut up, but in his own defense is just waiting for someone, anyone, to tell him to shut up…”

At any rate, I think thinking about death is really normal, and I think people who avoid thinking about death are avoiding thinking about loose ends they probably want to tie up in their life. I mean, if you can close your eyes and picture your own funeral, and you are at peace with yourself and the world you have created, then in my opinion, you’re probably doing a pretty good job at living, and you should carry on!

But if when you picture your own funeral, you have trouble thinking about death, and you feel like there are many things you need to do before you can die, and people to apologize to, and duties you have yet to perform, then perhaps it’s time to start paying attention to these things; and herein lies the benefit to thinking about your own death. It’s okay if you feel a sense of alarm when you think about death. It might not mean that you are unhappy about your life, it may just mean that you need to use the time you have left in order to change things and accomplish things, so that you can die with a smile on your face, rather than a terse expression of alarm and regret.

When you are organizing your life, I think it’s proper to problem solve by working backwards. Picture your own death. Picture it clearly, and with dignity. And imagine that it happens in a time frame and manner that allows you to think about your life, and to contemplate regret. If you died this evening, what would you actually regret? Don’t tell yourself what society and culture tries to tell you that you would regret. What does your own psyche say to you? Whatever these thoughts are; the real thoughts, the scary ones, and the ones you want to chase from your mind before you get a panic attack and begin to blush; these are the exact things you should begin chasing post-haste.

A lot of people have asked me what it’s like to get hit by a car, and what it’s like to think for a moment that you really might die. Well, I just told you. It’s a good reality check. You discover the things in your life that you are fulfilled with, and what is missing, and it CAN, if you let it, allow you to organize and reorder your life to make the decisions best suited for achieving the things you don’t want to miss out on, so you won’t have any regrets when you really do die.

The plane just had some turbulence. I didn’t freak out. If it crashed right now, I’d be okay. The book I’m reading is really good, I had a fun time writing this column, I am excited to see Alaska and to manage avoiding a death by Grizzly Bear attack (this sentence could also prove as ironic foreshadowing), and I love my family, my friends, and the mystery that awaits me as I continue to play around in a world that truly is my oyster (and it’s also yours!). Lately, I have embraced the fact that I do, indeed, like being a pearl, and I want to make the most of this experience, and that means doing crazy things like moving to a city that is currently partially underwater. Shit happens. And so does life.