This Is What Killed Me

I don't remember where I am along the road of keeping you posted on my reading progress.

I finished "Money" by Martin Amis. It was excellent.

I moved on to "The Moviegoer", by Walker Percy. This is classified as literature.

I get a kick out of these distinctions. At the upper left side of the back cover it says "fiction/literature."

As if adding the word literature makes it a better read.

Stephen King books do not say "fiction/literature" and I know this pisses him off. I read once where he railed against these pompous classifications.

Anyway, back to "Money." The book is about a guy who works behind the scenes in the porn industry. Producer, director, whatever. He makes a lot of money. He is obsessed with money.

He drinks a lot, parties a lot, is generally unreliable and eventually his life falls apart.

I am not here to talk about that today.

Somewhere in the story he says "Money is a suicide note."

Boom. Instant connection with my diseased and battered brain.

Money is indeed the ultimate suicide note. The great majority of us spend our entire lives, actually devote our entire lives, to making sure we have enough of it.

Most of us fall short.

Money overrides everything. We literally kill ourselves in pursuit of it. We have no choice.

Many are the cutesy clichés about family first, stopping to smell the roses and etc., but the truth is we spend the majority of our time prostrating ourselves before someone else (usually an unworthy someone else) to get our greasy little hands on dollar bills.

What a horrendous waste of life. Especially when you factor in the awareness that this drive to survive is actually killing us.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Whoever drew up the blueprint for life was a sadist.

At some point in our lives we should grab a dollar bill and write a suicide note on it. Reach on down to the darkest part of your soul and write whatever lurks there.

Or write your happiness on that note. I am told that some people are actually happy.

No matter what you write, still, it is a suicide note.

Carry the bill around in your wallet and make sure those responsible for your disposal when you are dead know that this note is to be part of the ceremony.

As I think about this it occurs to me that one sentence covers it all. I intend to copyright this idea and this sentence so I can profit handsomely from mortality.

Every death dollar should read: "This is what killed me."