I apologize for not being here for those who follow me
lately. I have been sick but that is no excuse to leave words unspoken and
unwritten for those who follow this blog to hear/read.
I feel it is necessary to commemorate someone whom I have never before mentioned in this blog merely because of the respect that I held
for him.
Roger Ebert.
I labelled this blog as a Guest Blogger of the Month, but if
only that were true.
I would have been honoured for him to acknowledge my
meager words by participating in my project, but I knew of no other way to categorize this.
There are very few public figures that I care in the least
about. Very few that affect me at all, and fewer still that affect me
profoundly. So many celebrities are worshipped or looked to for answers and
eloquence when all they do is mirror our own thoughts. They teach us nothing
that we didn't already know, or feel might be true.
Roger Ebert is not one of those men.
He is one of a select few people whose eloquence and insight
sometimes astounded me. He didn't always say things that I agreed with, but he
always made me reconsider my position on things. His words always touched me, and
I was honoured to have had very brief contact with him on Twitter. Even though
I didn't know him, I will miss him. These are his words on dying;
AN EXCERPT FROM "LIFE ITSELF: A MEMOIR"
"I know
it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the
other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on
the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death
as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder
and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime’s memories are
what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no
more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.
I don’t
expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am
writing. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and
the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. “Ask someone how they
feel about death,” he said, “and they'll tell you everyone’s gonna die. Ask
them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that’s not gonna happen. How about
this afternoon? No. What you're really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I
don't really exist. I might be gone at any given second.”
Me too, but I
hope not.
I have plans.
Still, illness led me resolutely toward the contemplation of death. That led me
to the subject of evolution, that most consoling of all the sciences, and I
became engulfed on my blog in unforeseen discussions about God, the afterlife,
religion, theory of evolution, intelligent design, reincarnation, the nature of
reality, what came before the big bang, what waits after the end, the nature of
intelligence, the reality of the self, death, death, death.
Many readers
have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death
without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what
is believed in. I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me. I
am 69, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. That
is in the nature of things. In my plans for life after death, I say, again with
Whitman:
I bequeath
myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want
me again look for me under your boot-soles.
And with
Will, the brother in Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” I say, “Look for me in the weather
reports.”
Raised as a
Roman Catholic, I internalized the social values of that faith and still hold
most of them, even though its theology no longer persuades me. I have no
quarrel with what anyone else subscribes to; everyone deals with these things
in his own way, and I have no truths to impart. All I require of a religion is
that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it. I know a priest whose
eyes twinkle when he says, “You go about God’s work in your way, and I’ll go
about it in His.”
What I expect
to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that
will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am
comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units:
thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings,
sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body
to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too
many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also
eventually die, but so it goes.
O’Rourke’s
had a photograph of Brendan Behan on the wall, and under it this quotation, which
I memorized:
I respect
kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect
the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except
that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the
old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
That does a
pretty good job of summing it up. “Kindness” covers all of my political
beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to
our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and
something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.
To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all
crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no
matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't
always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
One of these
days I will encounter what Henry James called on his deathbed “the
distinguished thing.” I will not be conscious of the moment of passing. In this
life I have already been declared dead. It wasn’t so bad. After the first
ruptured artery, the doctors thought I was finished. My wife, Chaz, said she
sensed that I was still alive and was communicating to her that I wasn’t
finished yet. She said our hearts were beating in unison, although my heartbeat
couldn’t be discovered. She told the doctors I was alive, they did what doctors
do, and here I am, alive.
Do I believe
her? Absolutely. I believe her literally — not symbolically, figuratively or
spiritually. I believe she was actually aware of my call and that she sensed my
heartbeat. I believe she did it in the real, physical world I have described,
the one that I share with my wristwatch. I see no reason why such communication
could not take place. I’m not talking about telepathy, psychic phenomenon or a
miracle. The only miracle is that she was there when it happened, as she was
for many long days and nights. I’m talking about her standing there and knowing
something. Haven’t many of us experienced that? Come on, haven’t you? What goes
on happens at a level not accessible to scientists, theologians, mystics,
physicists, philosophers or psychiatrists. It’s a human kind of a thing.
Someday I
will no longer call out, and there will be no heartbeat. I will be dead. What
happens then? From my point of view, nothing. Absolutely nothing. All the same,
as I wrote to Monica Eng, whom I have known since she was six, “You’d better cry
at my memorial service.” I correspond with a dear friend, the wise and gentle
Australian director Paul Cox. Our subject sometimes turns to death. In 2010 he
came very close to dying before receiving a liver transplant. In 1988 he made a
documentary named “Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh.” Paul wrote
me that in his Arles days, van Gogh called himself “a simple worshiper of the
external Buddha.” Paul told me that in those days, Vincent wrote:
"Looking
at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots
representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the
shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of
France?"
Just as we
take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star. We
cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take the train
when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, tuberculosis and
cancer are the celestial means of locomotion. Just as steamboats, buses and
railways are the terrestrial means.
To die
quietly of old age would be to go there on foot.
That is a
lovely thing to read, and a relief to find I will probably take the celestial
locomotive. Or, as his little dog, Milou, says whenever Tintin proposes a
journey, “Not by foot, I hope!”"
Thank you Mr.
Ebert.
And I'll still see
you at the movies.
(Take a look
around at his website. Movie reviews, opinion, social commentary and all sorts
of interesting things that will enlighten you and enthrall you with this most
interesting of men.)
