23 April 2014
How to be Mad and Happy at 55
(this essay is by Edward Limonov and originally appeared in the Exile.)
image via
Considering subject for my column for present
issue I have asked Mark Ames what he wants me to write. Mark suggested to me to
write a piece on the subject of health care, something sounding like "How
to stay fit at 55," written by Frank Sinatra or Jane Fonda. I laughed.
Then I thought, "Why not, as tomorrow is my birthday, I am going to be a
fifty-five, and I feel as mad and crazy as ever, as at thirty-five, so why
not?"
So
I will attempt to create something like "way to a good health," or,
"How to stay fit," or, "How to be mad and happy at
fifty-five," or "Doctor's Limonov advices to a middle-aged men."
First
requirement to fulfill is: the man of fifty-five should go to bed only with
young girls. For its religious orgies Tantrism have recommended usage of only
very young girls, not older than twenty, as it said in a sacred book
"Makhmudra-Tilaka." Jut recently I heard on Radio Liberty that
scientists made an astonishing discovery: longevity of a male's life depends on
quantity of orgasms he gets during his life. Man who experience many orgasms
during his entire life, including old age, live longer and stay younger.
So,
in order to stay young, throw away your old wife, never even look at
overweight, wrinkled woman. Find yourself a pretty teenage girl and fuck her as
often as you can. Don't let a complex of inferiority to overcome you. Contrary
to all rules of bourgeois society, in reality young girls like to get an
attention of older man, it flatters them. Many girls would be proud to go to
bed with you, it will give them enormous sexual thrill that they lack in
relationship with partners of their own age. Besides, some girls dream of
sexual relationships with their fathers. You will be welcome as a thrilling
substitute, believe me, or either I am not Doctor Limonov. Young girls will
excite you better. Young girls have a tight, hot pussies, their love juice is a
boiling one, on the contrary, love juice of an older woman is glue-like. Young
laugh, their freshness, even their naive stupidity will have a rejuvenating
effect on you. Listen to stupid hit songs with them, get them drunk, fuck them
and be happy.
Don't
be upset by your age, don't let social pressure on you to become so strong that
you will be choked by numbers of your age. Psychological victory over your age
will open you a way to pleasurable and easy life. However, don't stay with a
same girl for a long time. Change them.
Take
care of your look. It's easy. Just don't eat too much. Russian middle-aged man
usually overweight, American man also, as both countries have a bad eating
habits. Don't eat three times a day-eat twice a day. Me, for at least twenty
years now I never eat breakfast. In the morning I drink few cups of a very
strong coffee, or a very strong tea. I never eat before 2pm, or even before 4pm.
Second meal I eat between 8 and 9pm. I never limited myself in food consuming,
I eat a lot. But for last few years I eat very little of bread, or no bread at
all. I like meat, especially pork meat. From a Serbian wars I brought a habit
of eating tons of raw onions. My weight now is 67 kilograms. I consume alcohol
with pleasure, but sometimes I don't drink during a week or so. I never drink
before 6 pm.
As
to sport, I have in my apartment my dumb-bells and a weight of 16 kilos. From
time to time I do some exercises with weights.
To
conclude I must again underline the importance of getting rid of psychological
burden of your age, of those silly numbers. Behave yourself as if you don't
know your age. As you don't know what behavior is required by society from a
man of your age.
Transgress
all taboos, be mad. That is the key to a happiness of a man of fifty-five.
22 April 2014
My magic spell
When you're feeling blue, try this.
Lift some weights. Work up a real sweat.
Take a cold shower afterwards. During the cold shower, which should last at least three minutes, you have to yell loudly:
"I am a killer." Several times.
Yeah, I know. It sounds stupid.
But it works.
12 February 2014
05 January 2014
31 December 2013
Good bye 2013. And good riddance.
 |
| Men Fighting, 1950, photo by Elliot Erwitt |
Maybe it was because we forgot to eat black-eyed peas last New Year's Day. It's a Southern tradition: Eat black-eye peas -- a kind of bean, really -- and you'll have good luck all year.
Or maybe it was because we slacked on the other custom. In the Celtic countries of my ancestors, you're supposed to kick out the eldest male child before midnight. Then, he's to be the first one to enter the home in the new year, and he should be crossing the threshold with a full bottle of whiskey.
Good luck charms. I wonder if they would have helped during what followed.
First my aunt died. Then my father in law. Then my own father. My identity was stolen. When someone else uses your credit cards and checking accounts, it's disturbing, like being groped by a cold hand.
A close friend confided the worst kind of secret to me. The kind of secret owning a stench that sours even the best days. Our town was flooded, and mud-stinking water seeped in our basement. My son had a medical crisis, but it turned out well in the end.
Some other, major disappointments kicked the bottom out of the year. Mostly, as I looked over my calendars and journals, I got the sense of a long grind, of grief and stagnation that didn't lift much until the autumn.
It's all relative. I'm not, for example, scrambling for shelter in Aleppo. I got a new and hugely better day job. In each of the deaths I mentioned, the passing was a kind of mercy. Each of them had suffered with disease for long enough.
So: good in the bad, even this year. Still. Even though I'm another circle of the sun closer to my death, even though I lost time this year, time that won't ever come back, even with that, I'm glad to see this year go.
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, 2013.
25 December 2013
Leroy en anglais and in English
(Here's an English version of the poem I posted a few days ago. Francophones are invited to note any mistakes. Like most things, it sounds better in French.)
The dead are not dead.
They rent hotel rooms by the week
In small towns, in winter.
The dead are not dead
They look out the window
On Main Street, covered with snow
The dead are not dead
They’ll live in the middling hotel
Room number 15
The dead are not dead.
They’re charmed by the wardrobe, the mirror
And the slightly dated bathroom
The dead are not dead
They’re surprised to catch a glimpse of themselves as they
were,
when they were young
The dead are not dead
They calmly unpack their bags —
Light — just the necessities
The dead are not dead
They are finally
Without trinkets and red tape
The dead are not dead
Without newspapers piling up around them
Without the just-opened letters
The dead are not dead
They like the crispness
Of room number 15.
The dead are not dead
Soon, they’ll probably go down,
Take a walk in town
The dead are not dead
No one will recognize them
As their steps crunch in the snow
The dead are not dead
Like the rasp of catarrh
Maybe a drink in this bar
The dead are not dead
They note the difference
Between this and Dante’s Purgatory
The dead are not dead
The receptionist with the coal dark eyes
Reminds them of worn out loves
The dead are not dead
They like the soothing purity
Of a room arranged just so.
The dead are not dead
Unknown, and yet so friendly
They stretch out on the double bed
The dead are not dead
They read the single book
Chosen especially for the trip
The dead are not dead
They know every page
But finally they understand it
The dead are not dead
The snow still falls the snow falls again
They fall silent, smiling, say to themselves
The dead are not dead
They rent hotel rooms by the week
In small towns, in winter.
22 December 2013
20 December 2013
Poem by Jerome Leroy
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils louent des chambres d'hôtel à la semaine
Dans des sous-préfectures hivernales
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils regardent par la fenêtre de la chambre
La Grand Rue sous la neige
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils vont vivre dans ce deux étoiles
Chambre numéro quinze
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils s'amusent de l'armoire à glace
Et de la salle de bain un peu désuète
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils s'étonnent un instant de leur visage
Du temps qu'ils étaient jeunes
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils défont tranquillement leurs bagages
Légers juste l'indispensable
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils sont enfin tels qu'en eux-mêmes
Sans bibelots et sans paperasse
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Sans journaux qui s'entassent
Sans lettres à peine ouvertes
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils aiment la fraicheur nette
De la chambre numéro quinze
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils vont sans doute tout à l'heure
Se promener dans la sous préfecture
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils ne sont reconnus de personne
Leurs pas font craquer la neige
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Comme le bruit d’une pleurésie
Un verre peut être dans cette brasserie
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils remarquent la différence
Avec le Purgatoire de Dante
Les morts ne sont pas morts
La réceptionniste aux yeux bistres
Leur rappelle des amours fatiguées
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils aiment la pureté reposante
De la chambre bien rangée
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Anonyme et pourtant si aimable
Ils s'allongent sur le lit double
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils lisent un livre unique
Celui choisi pour le voyage
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils en connaissent chaque page
Mais enfin ils le comprennent
Les morts ne sont pas morts
La neige tombe toujours la neige tombe encore
Ils s'étirent sourient et se disent
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils louent des chambres d'hôtel à la semaine
Dans des sous-préfectures hivernales.
--Jerome Leroy
--Jerome Leroy
19 December 2013
Buying my father's coffin
I was confused. I thought were were going to the funeral home for some oven-side ceremony before my father's cremation. So I wore a suit, and I was filled with a certain amount of dread. But I was wrong. It was to be more of a sales session to determine the cost of the disposition of his corpse.
It was a sunny autumn day. In Colorado, you often have clear, hard sunshine when you'd prefer gloomy, low clouds.
The funeral home was a not unattractive beige stucco building. A stained glass window of a swirling tree was the centerpiece of a lobby. To the right, some memorial service or celebration of life was underway. You could tell, because some men wore suits and the little girls were dressed. It felt like a church function, but not an actual service. Overall, the home took its cues from suburban church architecture. Stained glass and couches. Thick comfy carpets and domed ceilings.
 |
| Not Mr. Moon. But pretty close. |
An attractive young woman greeted my wife, my new stepmother and me. She managed to project cheeriness with a readiness to offer sympathy. She asked our business and relayed our information.
The place smelled of woodsmoke. Which made me think of fires, ovens and ashes.
Then, the nice young woman ushered in a tall, moon-faced fellow whom she introduced as, of course, Mr. Moon. We went to a side room farther in the depths of the building. We took our seats at a large table. A computer monitor was on my left, another stained glass tree faced me, and a subdued landscape featuring a country road hung on my right.
Mr. Moon spoke in a hollow, breathy bass voice. He apologized in advance because he'd have to excuse himself during our meetings to leave. He'd had something at lunch that was causing him distress. A whiff of diarrhea entered the experience.
 |
| Styles to match every taste. |
Mr. Moon managed to blend the worst elements of a Presbyterian deacon and used car salesman in his manner. It made me wonder how he managed to do business of any kind at all. Maybe the grief of his prospects made them ignore his combination of sepulchral solemnity and pseudo-sympathetic sleaze.
To my relief, it turned out we'd be making arrangements and payments and not participating in a cremation ceremony at all. My shrewd stepmother held him to the firefighter's discount which made him wince.He laid out the options for services and cremations like a car salesman would, working hard for the upsell. We declined them all because we'd already planned other services of our own.
He excused himself. We tried not to think about Mr. Moon, his intestinal distress and its probable results, and failed. When he came back, I signed the paper work allowing them to transport his body to a central crematorium and specifying the treatment of his ashes.
Then Mr. Moon led us to a side room where the caskets and urns were on display. Urns come in a lot of styles, with crosses, stars of David, American eagles and other gewgaws plastered on them. Mournful imagery, of the kind favored in 19th century graveyards and the album covers of Goth bands, is not available. No weeping nymphs or mothers here. The cost of them was breathtaking. The functional and embarrassingly plain urns started around $200. This is for a box you could buy at Home Depot for $10, maybe $15.
But of course you feel like a penny-pinching peasant when you think thoughts like this in these circumstances. It's . . . Dad, after all. But, he's dead. And they're ashes.
We bought a low-end urn. My stepmother is not sentimental. I'm not either, at least, not when it comes to the storage of ashes.
 |
| Yes. that's the Last Supper on a casket handle. photo via the Denver Post. |
We looked good in the pink light of the room. We considered the esthetics of coffins. They all seemed overdone to me, fat boxes inspired by some mid-70s Detroit esthetic of pomp and crap. The extortionary pricing took away any shame any of us might have had in looking cheap.
But even knowing the sales machinery in operation, I paused. Would it mean anything? A fancy coffin? Would that make up for the times I'd politely begged off from seeing him? Would it smooth over the hatred I'd felt for him in the past? Could a coffin salve the past?
DId the Egyptians have a point? What if I sent him to an afterworld lacking some critical thing -- what would it be? Would cremation mean his soul would wander the earth, homeless? What if I was wrong about my beliefs? They didn't seem particularly well founded, or based on anything much at all.
I remembered my aunt in her coffin last January. The dead are so utterly dead. The soul, or whatever you want to name it, the personality, the animating snap of neurons, whatever it is that makes a person a person on this earth, in this frame, was gone.
Did it matter? I wanted it to matter. But I didn't see the means or the tools in the showroom, in that funeral home, to make it different.
Mr. Moon came back.
My stepmother asked for the least expensive option.
It was on a bottom shelf, barely visible under the gleaming silver and shiny blonde wood models.
A cardboard box. Really. Just picture the box a refrigerator comes in, turn it gray and add some paper sheets and a white pillow on the inside. It cost $75. We ordered it.
I signed the paperwork and a check for $4,500.
With the odor of woodsmoke still in our nostrils, we decided not to have a bite to eat.
Instead, we walked across the parking lot in the sunshine to our cars.
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