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ret·i·cule \ ˈri-də-ˌkyül \ - oil on canvass 24" x 24" (60.96 x 60.96cm) $800 US + shipping
(c) JD Rudometkin 2021. Contact artist regarding this piece, or for commissioned artwork.

SILVER BULLET

There is a part of you that wants to die. And another part of you that wants to live forever. Part of you believes that after you close your eyes for the last time, that’s it. And you are fine without heaven, or coming back as a Sonoran Desert toad. But part of you will come back. The judge will come back as the criminal to learn non-judgement. The lion will return as the lamb. When I see ghosts out of the corner of my eye, this is all quite clear. Read Dante. Or carefully observe how the silt gets pulled downriver, creating farmland with the apricots that you finally shat. Eventually, shit happens.

 Just before my father died, the last thing he did was look up at the clock. Then his spirit soared out in waves above the eucalyptus trees. I saw him passing through the leaves as clear as crystal. I wonder where he is now? Maybe nowhere except inside my diamond mine. My mother believes he is in heaven. But the Seventh-day Adventists think my father is waiting at the Penryn Cemetery until Jesus blows the horn.  

 There is a time when you will go away. You are afraid of this point in time. Therefore:

Its important to die before you die.

You can kill the part of you that needs to die while you are still alive. To put a silver bullet in your head and let the werewolf fold in on itself. Some would call this a suicide. For instance, there was a famous basketball player living in my father’s body who got cancer and died at age 25. Then, a new man was born inside my father’s radiated bones—who, fifty years later—chose to go off the machines that were breathing for him.

 A month or so before my old man left the room, I heard this woman on NPR talk about how its possible to arrange it so the living can stay with the body of a dead relative for a day or so before the grave diggers haul it off to the tomb. And that’s when God told me to arrange this type of death ritual for my kin. But none of us knew when he was going to cross over, so I went to a Berlin instead.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it says the spirit hovers around the body for 49 days before the final transition. This resonates with the part of my brain the likes abstract art. But people like my friend Andrew think that such books may or may not be true. Still, I wish I could have hung out with my father’s body before they hauled him away in that cold, black Cadillac. Maybe I will come back as my father one day. Or Andrew.

 We have a certain amount of time here. And nobody can tell you whether or not its better to accumulate a lot of loot and fame in this life or sit under a Bodhi Tree until the light comes on. But they do tell you anyway. They say things like, “Its important to die before you die.” Phrases that sound profound in the writer’s mind. For instance, Jim Jones thought he was lit. On the internet, Jim wrote:

 “To me, death is not a fearful thing. Its living that’s cursed.”

 So, lets say you listen to the guru of irrational thought for a moment:

You buy the silver bullet, and borrow your brother’s gun. You put it in your mouth and look up at the clock one final time. But you cannot pull the trigger. So you spend the last 25-50 years of your life defending positions of faith you hold on science or religion and mostly on the opinions you maintain about yourself. The hair grows long and hard out of your scalp and around your sweaty palm and eventually this hair cascades over the ivory handle of that semi-automatic weapon as you sit there in the blue chair, hovering between worlds of insight and self-defense with that gun in your mouth until you finally choke to death of natural causes.

 Then, after a brief pause in a Tibetan book—or purgatory, this:

 You wake up outside of a body—still sitting in that blue chair—looking at yourself as your father. Re-learning all the lessons about the grace you did not grant yourself the last time. Studying forgiveness for 49 days within the eucalyptus leaves. Returning from Berlin.   

 None of this is all that serious. Or true.

 So in the absence of formality and logic, may God richly bless you:

May your soul soar above the cotton mouth rattlers when you go. If you are a cotton mouth, may your thirst be quenched. May you meet Joseph Stalin and Saint Sebastian holding hands in the elevator. May you bark at the moon until the fangs fall off your face. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of room for all of this to make sense someday. As for now, I feel the trumpet friend—but it has yet to make a sound. My faith is silent, and there is still work to be done. One day I’ll see you on the other side of what we know this time around.  

(c) JD Rudometkin 2021

In order to fully experience the conversation above, you are encouraged to watch the video “Silver Bullet Suicide” (below).

Step Jayne is JD Rudometkin's music project. Over the past 5 years, he has released the album SILVER BULLET SUICIDE, one track at a time with an accompanying video. In this issue, Christopher Grier (Percussionist/Student of African Rhythm) and JD discuss the creation of the album's title track "Silver Bullet Suicide" as well as its thematic content including the idea of suicide as a dying to oneself. They also discuss the tender subject of actual suicide and possible causes including substance abuse and the idea of surrender as a way out.

Guitar/Vocals: JD Rudometkin
Produced by JD Rudometkin
Mastering: Pat Kearns
Cover photo/design: JD Rudometkin

Death Bed

 Here you are in the final room. Your breath is labored now and your heart is beating slowly. The memories of a lifetime fill your mind. The faces you have loved. The trips you have taken. The many goals you have accomplished and failed to accomplish. Sit with this. Do not run away. Once you have gone beyond the fear of death you are free.

Lying on your back looking up through the ceiling at the stars, your soul is getting light, and here are the questions:

• What do you say to God—fuck you or thank you?

• Do you wish you could stay longer—or are you OK saying goodbye?

• Did you forgive and ask for forgiveness?

The last thing you see as you lie down is a long road out into the open desert. It crosses over a low rise in the land and disappears. Here you are now, on that road. But not for long. As you crest the horizon, the metallic buzz of 100 cicadas fills your mind and your vision leaves the cardinal plan. You ask for a friend to hold your hand as you depart—and this helps, but deep within you you know that this is the final step, and you will take it alone. So, go outside and lie down on the ground. Feel the earth here, below your bones. You are returning to the place you came from. Your mother is calling you home.

 You still recognize forms and colors at this point. But the world has become a sequence of geometric shapes. Orange and bright yellow. It feels warm. And now, gradually, you do not feel anything because the new earth is flashing blue and your mind appears as a series of gates. One gate after another comes before your mind’s eye as you leave the world behind. Do you want to go back? Well, you can’t. Everything that feels familiar to you is fading away. There is not a single thread of your lover or friends or the memory of the home that held you here in this lifetime. Do you wish you could stay? Do you cling tight to the dream?

 After you leave the final gate you enter a state of grey. There is nothing here. This is beyond consciousness. And finally—Here is the ritual for July:

Lie back on the earth and close your eyes. Imagine grey on grey without end. And beyond grey no thought. Not a single prayer or answer. All questions are cleared. Stay here for 5 minutes. You are gone. And you are loved—as you have always been and will be. And That’s That.

You can be afraid to be here. But that’s no longer matters either. You’ve moved on and the common matters no longer concern you. You are no longer reading these words. You are somewhere else entirely. And it’s not peace or pain. There are no such ideas here. Tabula Rasa. The blank slate. And you are not even that.

Are you scared of being nothing? Of having everything you know disappear and never seeing it again? Why?

Do not run away this time. Die. See what happens. Maybe it’s not that bad to no longer exist. If you die before you die, it’s like meeting an old friend for the first time.

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