Death.

My Grandma died today.  I don't feel anything.

My dad's Grandma lived in England so we rarely saw her, she died five years ago.  My mom died when I was six and her mom, Grandma Dorris, lives in Michigan.  My stepmom's mom is the one that died.  The irony was that my grandma Dorris was always worried she would "overstay her welcome" and she would end up staying for a couple of days while Lorraine, the Grandma that died, would prolong her stay by a couple of weeks and we all wished she would only stay for a couple of days.  Hemingway once said on writing, “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck."  I don't have to write out the syllogism: you can see its relevance. 

I feel like Marceaux in The Stranger.  I don't remember the book that well but I do remember that his mother dies and he kills a man; the two have no correlation.  When he goes on trial, what troubles society most, what decides his guilt, is not the evidence that he kills a man but his seeming lackluster sentiment for the death of his mother.  We are troubled by the different ways in how people deal with situations, particularly those pertinent to death. 

Right now I'm sitting in the Salt Lake City airport.  Across from me sits a man obese enough that I wouldn't want to sit next to him on the airplane.  He crosses his right leg over his left as his left leg taps aimlessly against the ground.  He eats ice cream from a cone with a spoon.  What I find most troubling is that I have to investigate that he's not actually talking to himself but talking to a little device hooked up to his ear.  He says goodbye and starts talking to someone else.  When he returns from throwing out the paper that surrounded his waffle cone, he is finished with his conversation but leaves the black piece in his ear, prepared for his next call. 

Behind me sits three boys, I assume to be brothers.  The one to the left holds a portable PS2 in one hand and with the other hand, talks on his cellphone.  Madness.

Jimmy