The Road to Oblivion

When I die I won't go to heaven or hell, there will just be nothingness

isaac asimov

I believe in the concept of an eternal oblivion, that there will be a state of permanent unconsciousness after death, I used to be young then and I didn't bother about it much but eversince my grandmother passed away last year, I have been thinking about it a lot nowadays before I go to bed and these goddam thoughts are so psychologically strong like caffeine and disturbing that it can keep me awake and thinking for more than an hour or two after I hit the sack. With eternal oblivion all placed on all our lives' finish line, I came to this realization that I wanted to live a little bit longer, or just long enough to be happy to face the finish line.

I imposed better resolutions on my stupid habits with drinking and smoking with this thought alone, I used to jog 5 kilometers regularly years before, but after my grandmother passed away, me and peter raised the stakes with this route which was outrageously long at 22 kilometers to the airport from mcdonalds in the middle of our city.

I eventually came up with my own shorter route this year which was only at 18 kilometers, it was shorter but still one hell of a distance to defy running with both legs. But anyway I liked this whole routine of running on weekend mornings, at even halfway that distance I would be far off the countryside running with the sunrise and a whole lot of farmlands on both sides and people going about their miserable lives in the morning, things I never saw when I used to drink like mad the night before, and things I will never see again after I'm dead.

My blog site may be called weatherman, but it wouldn't take a real weatherman to figure out that with heavy rainclouds comes rain soon thereafter, but when I left yesterday morning at daybreak I hoped for clear skies and it wasn't until 5 kilometers away later when there was a lot of rainclouds all over the skyline ready pour cats and dogs.

It did rain, I never ran under the rain that much and I was quite far from home already to turn around so I just went on and felt great about the rain hitting me all over, only to realize later that the goddam rain was making my shoes squeak like ducks and my whole garb to my underwear soaking wet. So I stopped by this big tree on the road until the rain passes by, it wasn't much of a shelter because some of the rain got through but that was the best spot I could find on the road anyway, and it was also in front of a cemetery. The same cemetery where they laid my other dead grandparent and a whole lot of other dead people who already got to the finish line of life.

That is what my old man used to tell me, people are so scared of death that they go on building cemeteries where the living go and treat their special spot like their extended personality after death, like an oracle of their wisdom that doesn't speak anyway, they'd be glad to think about this whole treatment before they turn to oblivion where people treat their leftovers like living relics. It was raining that monday and there was nobody alive around that cemetery though. But no matter how much amount of running I make, someday I will just end up in a cemetery myself like that, but I wouldn't know anyway because my mind would be dead in oblivion and I wouldn't even know if I get buried afterwards, or thrown to the river or something. Time will, and it really will fly fast and I would be just like my grandfather over there all gone and dead, the same way he was also once like me now, right here 32 years old.

My grandfather is actually just a year younger than I am now in this picture and that's my old man he's holding, right about 6 months old. You know I was thinking too, that the least you can do about dying is to have a son to make copies of yourself. Although none of your conscious mind may be passed to your son but for the love of posterity I would be happy that I have an exact copy of myself to see the time beyond my own. Sometimes it made me realize why people are so overly protective about their kids is because they want them to continue their own lives, in a way, with everything they have to leave behind. By the time you'd have grandchildren around you'd be smiling at the face of oblivion when it gets to your doorstep.

What the hell I forgot, I still don't have both a son and a wife.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it

mark twain