BURY ME NOT - Danny Cohen blog entry
On any given day you can find me in a rural cemetary, dodging the fiery engines of groundskeepers. I'm trying to escape the frying pan of gardners from my retirement community. Geriatrics also peer in from the jacuzzi plateau, on the way to the 'clubhouse', to sign up for the potluck.
Ten years ago, they'd be playing shuffleboard or doing aerobics in the pool, but now they're too old. The smart and spry ones left in droves, when a conglomerate of crooks took it over (my mom [who signs up for 'desert'] was trapped by thousands of paintings and drawing classes).
I write boroque horror music on a tri-manuel theatre organ in the 'clubhouse', like the Phantom of the Opera. The diminished chords can be tamed into tunes like 'Vertigo', 'Death Waltz', 'The Fall', and 'Noah Baine', from my latest Anti CD 'Shades of Dorian Gray'. The theme of 'Rigormortis (on the Ridge)', addresses my premature buriel on the ridge.
Sometimes the batteries fail on a power chair, and I push a senior up the hill. I help them out of cars when the arthritis becomes bone on bone. I carry the Waldorf salad to the potluck (where a scrapbook shows my deceased dad as 'Syringe LaDouche' on Holloween). I provide piano accompaniment to 'Bury Me Not' or 'Jingle Jangle'.
I peruse 'easy listening' records with deaf afficianados in thrift stores. I'd scour yard sales for kitsch figurines with a furniture hound, then he died. I test the bindings of 19th century tomes with the 'Friends of the Library' spinsters. I grab dinner plates with the faces of nerds and swaths of paisly linen at the Elks sales.
They go in threes at the condo. The octagenerians joke about it; "They're dropping like flies". The cemetary's right across the street; next to an auditorium where John Raitt once did 'The Pirates of Penzance'.
After they get their hair done, they sing at the 'Hurry Sundown' convalescent home, then head to Casa de Paramecium for a bland chicken suiza (that nonetheless leads to Immodium AD). I tag along to the multi-plex, to reserve the handicapped seats before cranksters with mullets can usurp them