Pictures

These are pictures for my kids to know what their dad looked like one day. Instead of tucking them in a photo album, I post them on a social media site that guarantees their survival in case of house fire, or theft, or other natural disasters, including the apocalypse. People who are not my kids or that close to me scroll over them. They don't like or react to them. They don't read the story attached, though they too might have the same story to tell. It doesn't pertain to them and it's too long for a society with a two-second attention span. 

Or maybe these pictures are for my grandkids, or great grandkids, though surely social media will be obsolete by then, replaced by something none of us can fathom for if we could, we would be the next billionaires of whatever tech valley will pop up. We would sell market shares of our idea and live some obscene life somewhere that will probably end in divorce and tax fraud and a custody battle over a Siberian tiger. 

Indians said pictures steal the soul which makes sense because in what I see it doesn't seem like people have much soul these days. But what do me or Indians know, anyway? I can't help but to look at my pictures and see someone with less a soul than he had when he was younger. Maybe I'm just imagining it, or I just take bad pictures. I don't know, but it's like I am looking at my own ghost. I seem to freeze in pictures and I hope I don't look so goofy in live animation. 

Maybe people will have better souls when my kids and grandkids live as adults. I like to hope so. Maybe they will not kill babies, or do drugs, or expect to be revived if they do, or want money for nothing. Maybe they will believe in God and help their neighbor and love unconditionally. Maybe people won't be so bitter or vengeful and there will no longer be an us versus them mentality. People will care for more than their own image of caring.
 
I don't take a day for granted. Never have. I half expect a piano to fall on my head, a plane to crash into my house, a Mack truck to blow a red light straight into my car, or for a toaster to fall in my bath. I expect to get West Nile at any moment, or AIDS, or a fast-acting testicular cancer which causes my balls to drop out of my pantleg. I take pictures of myself in case I die soon. Not because I think I am cute, or for anyone's attention. I don't like people that much. Or care for their opinion. But this might be the last one, I think, before I have that aneurysm or get Ebola. 

Too often I hear or read of people passing unexpectedly and it always startles me, though it really shouldn't for such is life and I know it. When we are born to this world we are given the gift of life, a seemingly unlimited providence, but we are all fated an unknown expiration date that looms over some of our heads a little gloomier than others. Some of us carry umbrellas while others do not.

I like to think that one of my kids or grandkids will take up the mantle and be a writer, hopefully better than me, and he or she and I will have a lot to talk about either over coffee or tea together in this world, or spiritually somehow from one world to the other. Some kind of voodoo seance. For if there is a way to come back when I am gone, to communicate what I have learned to those I love, perhaps the whole meaning of life, certainly, I will. I don't want anyone to say that I was a wanderer who cared little for anyone. Surely, I was not. Home was simply very difficult for me to find for one reason or another. It was often a game of musical chairs of which I often lost. 

One piece of advice I'll offer all my male descendants, those bucks with the burgeoning antlers that they will anxiously rub on the trees of life: when you first date a woman, bring along a pail of water. Throw it on her immediately to she if she melts. That will save you a lot of grief. To my female descendants I'd say to only date a selfless man who knows himself and who loves his mother. And to never live in such a way to fear a pail of water. 

Maybe they will look at these pictures and laugh. Think I am goofy, or maybe creepy, or maybe handsome in a way. Maybe they'll know me when I am old and senile and pissing on myself in a nursing home and these pictures will be a great contrast to that old gray prune they have to visit once in a while at Pine Grove, or Shady Oaks, or Resting Willlows. Or maybe they will look at my pictures and see themselves in my eyes. Maybe they'll feel a little lost too, or misunderstood. 

Whoever you are, kid or grandkid of mine, believe me, I was misunderstood, too. I know how you're feeling. Sometimes home is in yourself. Sometimes it's hard to find. Sometimes it's lonely. Sometimes love feels a million miles away and your heart hurts. Mine sometimes hurts, too. It hurts now. And sometimes, I even did very dumb things to hurt it myself. But it didn't always hurt. Sometimes it felt like a Rolls Royce. Look at pictures of me and your grandma. Look at me then. Love is a magic cure all. Just don't give up on it and always give more than what you take from the well. 

I am you. You are me. Maybe you'll have my ears, or my nose, or my eyes. Maybe you'll have my creativity, or my self-doubt. I'm sorry for the latter, and you're welcome for the former. But both came from people before me. Pictures I saw as a kid of someone up the line who created me as I helped to create you. We are all made from someone else's love and happiness, and often as a result of their sadness and sorrows. 

There is so much I want to say to you. But this is what I need to say in case you feel like me when you look at me. You needn't the appreciation of others to write or paint or to make music. Make your own for you. Fill your own concert hall. Be your own favorite writer. Read your own books. You just need to truly love what you do and to express only yourself through your art and not mimic others' expression. Find your own voice. Believe in yourself even when no one else does. At times, no one will. Keep writing, painting, singing, playing, and loving. It is who we are and all that we have to ourself.

I was once here, just as you are, before I was murdered or whatever mysterious fate befell me that I do not yet know. I don't wish to be a millionaire or to marry a supermodel. I don't want a big house, or servants, or to live until I am 112. I only want you to know who I am. All of my kids and grandkids who care to look up my old profile on that obsolete social media website on the archaic internet that only the old people use. You've found my pictures. Now read my eyes and go love and live a beautiful life. And always know that I love you, even if we never met.