THE BIG NIGHTLIFE

Last night Echo turned to me out of the blue and asked if, when the time came to join the big party in the great beyond, I wanted to be interred in the States. I must be emanating an aura of transience. Hadn't given the matter much thought, really, though I can't see much need to go on a death tour. Like most Japanese, Echo is frank about such things, and has queried me on a number of occasions regarding the details of my sepultural preferences, perhaps the acid test of expatriatism.

Does one really want to spend eternity in the home country? Is there patriotism after death? Such promptings and the resulting grave thoughts deprive "home country" of all meaning, a fact reflective of its illusoriness as a concept. "Home planet," well, maybe, at a stretch; at least while I'm alive I think I'd rather be here (give me an alternative, though and I'll entertain it), though there are times I'd much prefer to be on Ganymede; but home country-- not much resonance in that idea at best: what does one get from a nation that does not after all derive from oneself? What right originates in a bureaucrat? I am the source of my liberty.

The first time Echo asked me if I wanted to be in her family plot on a hillside in Nagano I said sure, why not, then on second thought it occurred to me that there's not much night life in that vicinity, so I said to put half my ashes there and half in my own family plot back in New York, but then that's way out in the boonies too, so then I thought anywhere in the world or outer space would be ok too, such details are for the living.

I foresee no pilgrimages to my grave. I won't be there much anyway, boredom finds no greater depths than in a cemetery, excepting maybe a laundromat, so the where of it should involve a source of good times for all; other than that, it will have nothing to do with the me I am in life, or with nationhood-- how locked we are in ideas, how fastened we are to existence, even in death-- Simply let me be indistinguishable from everything once again, preferably not far from a timeless roadside stand with draft beer and a good jukebox.