That was a ride.

All I really wanted to do yesterday was stalk about Mark Sa....ooops! I mean Talk about Mark Sanford, (R) Governor of South Carolina turned sloppy romance protagonist. I wanted to say that we (meaning thinking, breathing humanoids) should really just stop worrying and whinnying every time a Bible-thumper has an affair. It's so boring. It's so cliche'. Even the hypocrisy is boring. Calling a religious, Republican, anti-gay rights, white male a hypocrite is a granted redundancy, isn't it? I seriously wanted to go on and on about it. I mean SO WHAT! So, he had an affair and "broke God's law" and humiliated his wife and lied to his staff and went AWOL and now is begging for forgiveness. Blahblahblahblah. I think these people (the Sanfords and all of their friends) watch too much T.V. I think the Governor has been taking in too much CSI and not spending enough time meditating and listening to the beating of his own heart, being present to the certainty of death and the urgency with which one must live and love. If he had been doing this important listening instead of being glued to the tube, then perhaps he would have left his wife and career a year ago to pursue true passion, or perhaps he would have yanked his head out of his ass and chosen to live by the slogans and standards he's set for his constituents. But he wasn't listening, was he. He's just a boob, very much the same as every other boob who sets out to be noble and is tripped by their own humanity, content to watch life on the 46 inch plasma rather than live in the real one pumping through his chest. Disappointing.

Then Farrah died. Then startlingly and suddenly, Michael Jackson died, out of nowhere, without so much as a prior stint in rehab to give us the heads-up that Death would be calling at some not-too-distant point. And the TMZ rag broke the story, so no one, including me, believed it for, like, an hour, until the CNN rag confirmed it. MJ's sudden meeting with the Maker sucked all other conversation out of every room for most of the rest of the night. Death, with all of its certainty and arrogance, did in fact come and, as it often does, at a most unwelcome and inconvenient time. So many things to talk about in the world: the craziness/hopefulness/heartbreaking atrociousness of the Iranian election, nutty Republican philanderers, Obama and how he's my President, not my boyfriend, then WHAM! MJ drops dead.

I felt an immediate sadness and loss. I was already mourning Farrah and the loss of a childhood idol, but MJ's death really felt like the loss of my childhood. It's not that I was his biggest fan. I really haven't been interested in anything he's done since Thriller, but his influence on the 80's and the shape that music and pop culture took because of his influence is so...American. His personality was the very essence of American culture in the 80's: the excess, the weirdness, the commodification of personality and, of course, the sexual ambiguity. Even though I feel very separated from the 80's, that period of my life, and from MJ and his art, news of his death still felt very immediate and personal, like a distant, but very important, relative had died. Weird, rich, reclusive uncle Michael, who used to be a singer and had a monkey and sent us crazy pictures from his travels around the world. We loved him, even though we never really knew him.

I did NOT want to write about Michael Jackson's death. Even in less than 24 hours, it's become boring. The tributes and retrospectives and shocked reactions by "friends" and "fans" came in such a tidal wave that it quickly flooded every known media source and now I'm already feeling drowned. There's nothing left to say about it. I can only say that I was sitting at my desk looking at something on the internet and my boss lady IM'd me and said "Michael Jackson just died too!" like it was a trend. I immediately felt the urge to play Thriller and do a little zombie dancing. I don't even own any MJ music any more, but I feel compelled, almost beyond my control, to purchase Off The Wall and Thriller on iTunes, as if to assuage my own guilt after dismissing him years ago, deciding he was too weird to be relevant. Another friend/co-worker commented that "Don't you think he's better off dead?". No, I really don't. Not believing in an after-life, there is no "better off" after life has ended, in my opinion. The only better off is in wakening one's mind and training one's self to experience every moment up until one's death with humility and reverence. I don't slight him for his humanity. I don't slight anyone (including Mark Sanford) for their humanity. I feel disgust and pity for people who can't recognize their own pain, can't stop the circus in their own head to experience what is really happening to them, especially when it appears so obvious to outside eyes. For crap's sake Michael, how could you not see how crazy you were becoming! Did you think all of the damage from your activity with children was just the result of over-eager journalists? Did you really see your strange obsession with changing your appearance as a good thing? Really? Couldn't you step outside of it all and see the lesson in it, laid out before you like a giant fucking paint-by-numbers?

So no, I don't think he's better off anywhere. I hope he actually did spend a significant amount of quiet time in the past few years thinking and listening to his own heart. I hope he did not feel sorry for himself or feel embarrassment about anything, but instead came to peacefulness and acceptance of his humanity and was able to feel real love and joy and awe at his own extraordinary journey on the planet. I mean WOW, that was a ride, wasn't it? That was a fucking ride.