Harriet Douthitt
    Whatever Sphere or Bardo
    Universe 01, Cosmos
    (Please forward.)
    
    December 4, 2002
    
    Dear Harriet,
    
    You may already be aware that I only recently found out about your passing some
    thirteen years ago.  What a kick in the pants that was!  I found an article in the
    online archives of the Oregonian newspaper that said you'd hit a utility pole and got
    your head bashed in.  The article gave all the gruesome details: how your legs were
    pinned under the dashboard, the unplugging of life support as you flatlined, the
    distribution of your physical envelope's usable wetware equipment to grateful organ
    receivers, right down to the corneas of your eyes.  (Well, that's you all over the
    place.)  Made me feel a little guilty that I've told people to cremate my remains. 
    Maybe I could donate an organ or two, but I feel sure nobody would want most of
    mine, abused as they are.  My heart's gotta be pretty strong, though, considering the
    blows it's taken.  Maybe I'll rethink the organ donor trip.
    
    The article was also rather emphatic about the fact that you didn't buckle your
    seatbelt that day, that you believed in keeping safe by visualizing a white light
    around you.  Now, I don't know (or remember) if you learned that white light stuff
    from me or not.  You were always out picking up spiritual teachings from places like
    Esalen, places where everything was all sanitized, authorized, and New Age.  That
    was one of the differences between you and me.  I made it a practice to get my
    spiritual teachings the hard way, by charming the priestess at the back door of the
    temple.  Thus, I could pick up on gems of wisdom without taking the usual vows to
    "use the knowledge only for good".  I could walk the spiritual path while still
    maintaining my paranoia.  
    
    Yeah, everybody puts paranoia down, but my paranoia has saved me from certain
    death many times, especially when I've been behind the steering wheel of a vehicle. 
    Whenever I drive, I maintain the certain knowledge that every other driver on the
    road is out to do me in.  It makes me cautious.  I beware of day-care vans especially. 
    Those drivers are notorious drunks and homocides.  Furthermore, you should never
    trust inanimate objects like utility poles.  They'll jump right off the shoulder to take
    a bite out of your car, without any provocation whatsoever.  I think you learned that
    the hard way.  The trees have it in for us, too, with good reason.
 The article caused me to rethink a thing or two.  I had always thought of you as above-it-all, your
  tones condescending, your social smile splendidly beautiful but polished.  I
  had thought you isolated within that fortress of social grace.  Maybe I was
  wrong about that.  Maybe that smile, which seemed so genuine, actually was genuine.
  So many people crowded into the ER where your body was being kept alive, so many
  came to your memorial service... You must have been a wonderful, effective counselor.
  I bet you combined counseling skills with Rei-Ki and other alternative techniques.  Maybe
  you really were a goddess, all the time.  Well, if you read this, I'm glad you have a
  good sense of humor.  If you were like the goddesses of ancient Greece, then I'd be
  in a vat of really hot sheep dip right now.  I wish I could get the spacing right on this damn thing.  

    You had too much faith and goodness, kid.  Didn't I ever tell you that you needed to
    be more wicked?  If I didn't, then I should've.  The good die young.  God and the
    Devil let the wicked live long, in hope that they'll improve with age.  In your next
    reincarnation, if you do reincarnate, take a some time to practice a little selfishness.
    Eat the last bonbon in the box.  Take the biggest piece of chicken.  Hold onto that
    dollar you were going to put in Santa's collection can.  And it wouldn't kill you to
    smoke a cigar every once in awhile, maybe play some poker on Sunday now and
    then.  I smoke, and I'm still alive.  AT LEAST I HAVE SENSE ENUFF TO
    BUCKLE MY FRIGGIN' SEATBELT!  
    
    I see in the article that you were a counselor and an author.  If you were a
    counselor, then you must have taken your degree in a social science.  I could've
    sworn it was Media-Something.  Maybe that was just a notion you talked about.  If
    so, then I'm glad you didn't pursue it.
    
    I was relieved to discover you were so successful in the last years of your tour of
    duty in the physical sphere.  But then, I always knew you'd make it.  Not only were
    you successful by society's standards, but also by mine.  I'm quite persnickety in that
    respect, so you know I'm saying a lot when I say I'm proud of you.  I am also
    insanely envious.  Not that I don't feel successful myself.  By my personal standards
    of success I'm more successful than I ever dreamed of being.  But by society's
    standards I'm kinda so-so.  But then, I'M STILL ALIVE!  
    
    Not only am I alive, but I've successfully mixed my genetic codes with a fine Korean
    strain and passed the results on to posterity.  Of course, my kid doesn't appear to be
    in the market for a mate to produce some grandbabies, but maybe that'll change
    after he graduates.  Hopefully, he'll get busy on that in the next five or six years.  If
    he doesn't, then I may have to slap him around some.  Maybe I should look into the
    possibility of a sperm bank donation.  In any event, I think we can safely say that
    I've outrun you in the Darwin competition.  (YAY!)  Of course, some billions of
    people do that every day.  Now I really am depressed.  I am a pathetic excuse for a
    human being, a waste of good protoplasm.  But I'm still alive...
    
    Speaking of sperm banks, I wonder if you've got some eggs in a deep freeze
    somewhere.  It seems like a person with the foresight to donate organs would have
    thought of that.  Maybe not.  My mind wanders down twisted paths sometimes.
    
    Anyways, I guess I've ranted and raved enough for one letter.  Your old friend Revel
    says to say "Thank you" for teaching her how to polarize people's auras.  Charlie
    Catfish sends his love and says he hopes you'll reincarnate as a pretty girl again.  If
    you already have, then you couldn't be more than twelve or so, so I don't know what
    good it would do any of us old guys.  Give us something to look at, I guess.  Hell's
    belles, I might live another twenty or thirty years in this life.  By the time I
    reincarnate, you'll be maybe forty or so.  You could be my next mom!  That's kinda
    creepy.  Told ya my mind wanders down some twisty paths.   
    
    So, it was a good life.  Looking forward to the next one.  Hasta la vista, kiddo!
    
    Love,
    Ernie
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