A Bit of Bhutanese
from Brain Damaged News
The Bhutanese -- who are said to be truly happy humans -- believe you must confront death five times a day. But if you don’t live a rural Himalayan life, the WeCroak app can help. Or at least it claims it can.
For the cost of a café mocha, you get a buzz without caffeine. Five random times a day, five perky chirps that say, “Don’t forget you are going to die.” Death used to be taboo. Now it’s trending. Even a trend to hang in Death Cafes. I apologize. ”Hang” is not the verb to use here. Also climbing the charts, the Swedish art of death cleaning.
But most of us don’t die. We “pass” like a breeze or a butterfly. We check out, kick the bucket, kick the can, bite the dust, buy the farm, close the bodega, take our last bow, cross the great divide, and give up the ghost.
In a piece for The New York Times, the writer Jami Attenberg, said, “There’s a comfort in reading memoir. Whatever outlandish or terrible events befall the main character, we know that in the end he or she is going to be essentially OK. The narrator has at least gotten her act together enough to publish the book.”
This doesn’t apply when you’re my age. The book may not be published and I may not be OK. I may be dead. Nevertheless, I pray for a stellar agent and a stellar imprint -- and pre-posthumous publication.