Tag: dignity

Warsaw & Copenhagen. Let’s talk of things that will happen.

On Sunday I fly to Warsaw and then get on a buss to Sanok for my grandmothers funeral. I will need to borrow a shirt and black pants when I get there, as well as visit a barbershop. I don’t do funerals so don’t know how to dress or behave. I guess I’ll take my queues from the rest of the family.

A couple of days later I’ll fly from Warsaw to Copenhagen for the alt_cph 2009 where we’re participating with SKUP PALET. Having an ambulatory career is part and parcel of the romantic notion of the artistic life but I don’t feel all that much enthusiasm about it. If I had a car or a boat I guess slow migration wouldn’t be bad, but these shit airlines are so far removed from any romantic ideals that only the movement remains, none of the glamour.

stigbergtorget_moln

We need to bring back zeppelins or slow trains. There is no dignity to travel today. I don’t think this is me whining about the lack of comfort — remembering that the cheap flights of today were pipe dreams ten years ago — but there’s no fun in just going somewhere. A five day trip would require you to prepare mentally for moving somewhere; You’ll be more fluid and maybe less stuck in one place, paradoxically because travel would be more difficult.

Whatever, I’m just bummed about the reason for the trip. I’ll occupy my time taking pictures of Poland to show folks back home later, as per Wakabas request. Maybe I’ll do a slideshow and commentary. Who would be up for an hours worth of lecture on travel in Poland?

If wet, in a library.

There’s a debate on assisted suicide up on Metafilter, brought about by an article by writer Terry Pratchett. I’ve posted on suicide before, but this is more about terminally ill and suffering people and the battle for the right to decide when to go that some of them are waging. My mom brought up the subject in connection to her own mother being very ill and suffering the worst of old age right now. I don’t know how I would handle the request if someone would ask me.

Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and is writing the article from the perspective of someone who will be horribly sick before dying. It’s well worth ten minutes of your time. Memento mori, and so on.

As an author, I’ve always tended to be known only to a circle of people – quite a large one, I must admit – who read books. I was not prepared for what happened after I ‘came out’ about having Alzheimer’s in December 2007, and appeared on television. People would stop me in the street to tell me their mother had it, or their father had it. Sometimes, it’s both parents, and I look into their eyes and I see a flash of fear. In London the other day, a beefy man grabbed my arm, smiled at me and said, ‘Thanks a lot for what you’re doing, my mum died from it,’ and disappeared into the crowd.

→ Daily Mail, Terry Pratchett: I’ll die before the endgame [Via: Metafilter]