This American Death

For the last few months, I've been drifting. Not in a warm, hazy, 10mg Valium kind of way where the hours melt into days like a Salvador Dali painting. This drifting is a result of plain old apathy.

It crept up on me when I wasn't looking and next thing I know, it's 2008, Spring has taken over where Winter left off and I'm catatonic.

Music feels flat and low-fi. Television wafts through my brain like a passenger train unloading shows at each stop. My guitar needs new strings, my hair needs cutting, my car needs oil, yet I can't muster the effort to care. My garden of necessity remains untended like an abandoned Detroit auto factory.

As I numbed my way through work today, I stumbled onto the website of National Public Radio's show This American Life. It's a good show and an effective way to kill an hour here and there.

The episode I chose wasn't giving me whatever I sought so I scrolled through the archives to pick something more to my liking. When I found an episode called "Last Words" from 2006, it caught my attention.

I've always been fascinated by the last words of the dying and epitaphs of the dead. It's a bottom of the 9th inning, bases loaded, full count finish. It's the last second in the spotlight before it's curtains. As described in the episode summary, it's "one last moment of asserting the fact of our existence, at the moment of our annihilation." It is that momentous. I've been crafting my epitaph for years and I'm far from satisfied.

As I listened to the show, I sensed something I haven't felt in a long time - Alive. Hell, I was flat out moved.