Playing the Ghost

There are plenty of ways to practice dying while still alive. Many of these come from established religious traditions, and have important physical, psychological, and spiritual demands, such as being dunked in a river, being covered with paste made from the remains of a fresh cremation, non-orgasmic sex, sitting still and breathing for half an hour, or, sometimes, just simply muttering "death death death" to yourself. I have not (yet) tried all of them. But it occurred to me that, rather than going and burying myself alive at sunset and bursting out of the ground at sunrise, I might want to try to invent my own ritual for dying while alive. But how? The individual cultures and traditions that spawned the techniques I've listed above are thousands of years old. It would be hard for me to hold a candle to their meaning-making abilities. However, it would probably be less expensive than getting drugged and sent through an underground labyrinth filled with puppets meant to represent the people I meet in the Underworld.

(And I suppose this might be more of the heart of my "we don't get Death in America" rant. I don't feel like we generally prepare ourselves for Death in such meaningful ways. Death is sort of the unfortunate consequence to a life that, otherwise, fully intended to live in its apartment.)

My first thought was how to cope with letting go, whether you wanted to or not. Even if the experience of dying isn't entirely available to me, the contrition involved in the passage of time might be a step into that experience. Maybe if I go somewhere that I am no longer welcome, it will show me how life has continued without me, and will go on continuing without me, regardless of how much I would like to have buildings named after me. And the best place for that is a place that I've found myself incredibly attached to, one that is a deep anchor for my own identity, and one that persists without me to this day: my undergraduate college. In less than a year, everyone I know will have graduated. I've also never been back since I graduated. 

So perhaps a pilgrimage to a place that no longer remembers me will give me some insight into how to learn about dying while still alive. Perhaps I will play the ghost, and linger on a bench all day without speaking to anyone, and see what happens.

Or, perhaps something else entirely!