How was the funeral?

I woke up to intense dreams. Apparently a lot of people had intense dreams last night. When I was in the shower I got a text from my mom about an old friend of mine that died. When I was younger I thought it was morbid that anyone would read the obituaries, but as I'm older I find myself scanning through it sometimes when I'm at the coffee shop and have given up on the crossword puzzle. I always do my crosswords in pen and draw a big dick on them when I get frustrated. If you ever pick up a paper with a half finished crossword in pen with a big dick drawn on it? that was mine.
  
 I didn't know how he died, but I cleared work for the day and made plans to go to the funeral. We had gone to grade school together since the first grade. Went to each other's birthday parties and spent the night at each other's houses. He was one of my few grade school friends that actually went to my high school. We always had pleasant words for each other but drifted apart. I can't remember the last time I saw him, so I'm not sad. Only thoughtful and respectful. People die. shit happens.

  I put on my suit and went out into the cold and rainy day. Just the day for a funeral. The funeral was at the Church of the River, on the bluffs overlooking the river. The views are beautiful and if I was going to go to a church I'd probably go to this one. At least you can stare out the window at the water. 
   I met his brother and sister, who didn't seem to remember me. I'm not offended. Last time they saw me I was a kid. Probably been 20 years at least. 
  
    His brother told me it had been a suicide. Typical. That seems to be the leading cause of death for people i know, followed by overdose. Every 6 months or so, I hear about another suicide or OD. I get it. I understand why. I suffer from a mild depression. It comes in waves. In 2010 it hardly reared it head at all. In 2009 it was around big time. It can be triggered by events, or even the weather. 
   
   I'm fascinated by suicide, but don't worry. I'll never do it unless I have some disease that reduces me to a shit and piss factory. I will die with dignity, goddammit. And if i did, i would make sure I had enough strength to get out to the woods. Let the crows and coyotes eat me. My parting gift to the world.

    There was a slide show on the wall with pictures of Grant. Pictures from when we played soccer together at St. Louis. Pictures of him as a grown man hiking in what looked liked Yosemite National Park. His brother told me he had been living in California, had a long term girlfriend and enjoyed hiking. At one point in my life I would have asked "with all those things to live for why would he kill himself?" Depression is not rational. When I'm going through a low spell, I could make a list of all the things I'm grateful for, all the people that I love and love me, and it still will not help. Depression is this ugly funk that comes from the center of your heart and it's hard to see anything else when it's around.
  
    I was interested in Grant's love for hiking because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I recently read Into The Wild and then I just finished another book called A Walk In the Woods about a guy who tries to hike the Appalachian Trail. I've been fantasizing about doing that. Walking for 6 to 8 months through woods and mountains, camping every night with only what I can carry on my back. I'd give anything to try. And I know that if my depression ever gets too big a hold of me, that's what I would do. Instead of killing yourself, why not do the craziest thing you ever thought of. Walking the Appalachian trail you will either quit, succeed and learn volumes about yourself or die. I wrote a song once that said: "with nothing to lose, you could have let it ride instead of folding your hand. at least you'd still be alive. Just stand up and be a man." I wrote that about two other friends who had killed themselves. But then again, it's a rational mind that would think: "I'm miserable. I might as well go for broke". A depressed mind is totally obscured by dark clouds.

   During the sermon i stared out at the river. The words were delivered by stiff old men. They were all about praising god and worshiping god. I looked out in the grey cold and tried to imagine what it looked like before all the hardwoods were cut down, before everything was razed and divided. The idea of worshiping god was silly to me. The only reason we want for anything is because someone, probably a stiff old man devised a system so that they could have power and control and be rich. Everything we needed was out there for the taking and they took it from us. That's probably why people get depressed and kill themselves. This world was designed for the rich and shallow. Rather than have the biggest condo overlooking the river, I'd rather look at an expanse of river unpolluted my man's trivialities. God was all around us. It was not in a booming voice from the sky, but in the sun and the rivers, the animals and plants. These things would be abundant and if they were not, we would die and death is nothing to be feared. The dead get to sleep. the dead don't have to toil. The men who took over had not the wisdom to know this and I have little faith that the men who hold power now will ever know it either. Power is a liquor that causes madness.
   
Staring at the river made me think of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse where he goes to the river and is thinking suicidal thoughts.

Siddhartha walked through the forest, was already far from the city, and
knew nothing but that one thing, that there was no going back for him,
that this life, as he had lived it for many years until now, was over
and done away with, and that he had tasted all of it, sucked everything
out of it until he was disgusted with it. Dead was the singing bird, he
had dreamt of. Dead was the bird in his heart. Deeply, he had been
entangled in Sansara, he had sucked up disgust and death from all sides
into his body, like a sponge sucks up water until it is full. And full
he was, full of the feeling of been sick of it, full of misery, full of
death, there was nothing left in this world which could have attracted
him, given him joy, given him comfort.

Passionately he wished to know nothing about himself anymore, to have
rest, to be dead. If there only was a lightning-bolt to strike him
dead! If there only was a tiger a devour him! If there only was a
wine, a poison which would numb his senses, bring him forgetfulness and
sleep, and no awakening from that! Was there still any kind of filth,
he had not soiled himself with, a sin or foolish act he had not
committed, a dreariness of the soul he had not brought upon himself?
Was it still at all possible to be alive? Was it possible, to breathe
in again and again, to breathe out, to feel hunger, to eat again, to
sleep again, to sleep with a woman again? Was this cycle not exhausted
and brought to a conclusion for him?

Siddhartha reached the large river in the forest, the same river over
which a long time ago, when he had still been a young man and came from
the town of Gotama, a ferryman had conducted him. By this river he
stopped, hesitantly he stood at the bank. Tiredness and hunger had
weakened him, and whatever for should he walk on, wherever to, to which
goal? No, there were no more goals, there was nothing left but the
deep, painful yearning to shake off this whole desolate dream, to spit
out this stale wine, to put an end to this miserable and shameful life.

A hang bent over the bank of the river, a coconut-tree; Siddhartha
leaned against its trunk with his shoulder, embraced the trunk with one
arm, and looked down into the green water, which ran and ran under him,
looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to
let go and to drown in these waters. A frightening emptiness was
reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness
in his soul. Yes, he had reached the end. There was nothing left for
him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into
which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of
mockingly laughing gods. This was the great vomiting he had longed for:
death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! Let him be food for
fishes, this dog Siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten
body, this weakened and abused soul! Let him be food for fishes and
crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits by the daemons!

With a distorted face, he stared into the water, saw the reflection of
his face and spit at it. In deep tiredness, he took his arm away from
the trunk of the tree and turned a bit, in order to let himself fall
straight down, in order to finally drown. With his eyes closed, he
slipped towards death.

Then, out of remote areas of his soul, out of past times of his now
weary life, a sound stirred up. It was a word, a syllable, which he,
without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word
which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the Brahmans, the
holy "Om", which roughly means "that what is perfect" or "the
completion". And in the moment when the sound of "Om" touched
Siddhartha's ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up and realized the
foolishness of his actions.

Siddhartha was deeply shocked. So this was how things were with him,
so doomed was he, so much he had lost his way and was forsaken by all
knowledge, that he had been able to seek death, that this wish, this
wish of a child, had been ale to grow in him: to find rest by
annihilating his body! What all agony of these recent times, all
sobering realizations, all desperation had not brought about, this was
brought on by this moment, when the Om entered his consciousness: he
became aware of himself in his misery and in his error.

Om! he spoke to himself: Om! and again he knew about Brahman, knew
about the indestructibility of life, knew about all that is divine,
which he had forgotten.

But this was only a moment, flash. By the foot of the coconut-tree,
Siddhartha collapsed, struck down by tiredness, mumbling Om, placed his
head on the root of the tree and fell into a deep sleep.

Deep was his sleep and without dreams, for a long time he had not known
such a sleep any more. When he woke up after many hours, he felt as if
ten years had passed, he heard the water quietly flowing, did not know
where he was and who had brought him here, opened his eyes, saw with
astonishment that there were trees and the sky above him, and he
remembered where he was and how he got here. But it took him a long
while for this, and the past seemed to him as if it had been covered by
a veil, infinitely distant, infinitely far away, infinitely meaningless.
He only knew that his previous life (in the first moment when he thought
about it, this past life seemed to him like a very old, previous
incarnation, like an early pre-birth of his present self)--that his
previous life had been abandoned by him, that, full of disgust and
wretchedness, he had even intended to throw his life away, but that by a
river, under a coconut-tree, he has come to his senses, the holy word
Om on his lips, that then he had fallen asleep and had now woken up and
was looking at the world as a new man. Quietly, he spoke the word Om to
himself, speaking which he had fallen asleep, and it seemed to him as if
his entire long sleep had been nothing but a long meditative recitation
of Om, a thinking of Om, a submergence and complete entering into Om,
into the nameless, the perfected.

What a wonderful sleep had this been! Never before by sleep, he had
been thus refreshed, thus renewed, thus rejuvenated! Perhaps, he had
really died, had drowned and was reborn in a new body? But no, he knew
himself, he knew his hand and his feet, knew the place where he lay,
knew this self in his chest, this Siddhartha, the eccentric, the weird
one, but this Siddhartha was nevertheless transformed, was renewed,was strangely well rested, strangely awake, joyful and curious. 

  Later on, I thought about the most retarded question in the English language. "How was the funeral"? Someone asks me every time. It sucked! It was a funeral for crissakes!