July 18, 2009 9:21 p.m.

Light up and breathe deeply. You are smelling the residue of my last fifteen minutes.

There are, according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. They are not necessarily experienced in order, and not everyone goes through every stage. When I quit smoking four weeks ago, I skipped the first three stages and went straight to depression. Real, genuine depression. In the interest of full disclosure, I was also reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" that week, a combination that in hindsight was not a cocktail for emotional contentment.

And now I've found a new stage, one which hasn't made the textbooks yet. It's the one you learned from your parents.

I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

July 15, 2009 9:17 p.m.

Peeling back the rind to find a juicy center. My last fifteen minutes.

Tonight I began systematically purchasing fruit in a futile effort to stave off my inevitable demise. The fruit has been acquired with the intent of consumption, kind of like when you bought that Nautilus Bowflex machine with the intention of getting back into shape. Now it sits in your rec room room, mocking you, and performing admirably as a constant reminder that even your most modest aspirations are apparently unattainable.

I have the same relationship with fruit. For example, I just purchased more grapes than I have ever consumed previously over the course of my life, which is equivalent (in weight) to approximately one and a half pounds. This is not an exaggeration. And when faced with my failure, and the fact that I don't really (as it turns out) like grapes that much, I will bring them to work where frankly anything could happen to them. My wife thinks I'm being healthy, and I don't have to process the silent mockery of a bag of grapes on a daily basis. Everybody wins. Try doing that with a Nautilus.

Not that all of my exposure to fruit have been unpleasant. Some of my favorite fruit related experiences:

Orange juice
A slice of lime in my gin and tonic
The poem "This Is Just To Say" by William Carlos Williams
Watermelon Bubble Yum


This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

--William Carlos Williams

This Is Just My Dinner

I have eaten
several tacos
that I found in a
Mexican restaurant
near our house

although I purchased
grapes and told you
earlier
that I would eat them
for dinner

Forgive me
they were delicious
so warm
and so crunchy

--Jack Altmiller

July 13, 2009 10:09 p.m.

Shifting gears as I approach the onramp to the information superhighway. Destination: my last fifteen minutes.

I am pondering whether material possessions can truly bring emotional fulfillment. Whether felicity can be bound to computer chips and LCD screens. It has been said that money cannot buy happiness, but that it can buy a better brand of sadness. And I am all about brand loyalty. So, behold the technological poetry that is the LG enV. Humble yet confident, its reach never exceeds its grasp. A numerical face before an alphabetical heart.

This new addition to family follows on the heels of the loss of the bad seed that was the Verizon Trio. A gift from my partner that became a curse upon all of our houses.

Can a cell phone be evil? Good question. The answer is yes. Those who knew me in the dark days of early 2009 have heard of my deep and abiding hatred of this malevolent tool. So poisonous that it was not safe to allow it near any other electrical devices. Its poor design and difficulty of use was complimented by its tendency to call random individuals (seemingly at its own whim) and to cease working entirely for reasons known only to its own black heart, and (perhaps) its diabolical creators. If the phone performed the task you intended, you could be certain that it was only the result of coincidence. Hatred is a strong word. It is appropriate here.

The facts. Yes, I did fantasize about the violent death of this device. I did suggest that I would set about to killing the phone, while making it appear to be an accident, or perhaps even a suicide. But I am innocent in its disappearance, which occurred while hiking in the wilderness of northern Westchester County. In the real world, that phone could hold a charge for no more than eight hours; it sucked more power than a small village. In the woods, it probably wouldn't have lasted until dusk without a charger. Search parties were not deployed.

Back home, they informed me that the machine was insured. Really? Yes, we can send you a new phone in a few days. The same phone? Yes. The same model? Yes, it won't cost you anything. No thanks, I'd rather spend the two hundred dollars to own a phone that doesn't suck so badly that I've had detailed hallucinations about what it would like if it was on fire. Shhh. The nightmare is over.

I am released.