Monday, May 08, 2006

Hey, Roth, How About You Die First

I hate Philip Roth. I don’t think he’s a genius and I don’t like reading his books. When I heard he was going to be on Fresh Air this afternoon I should have turned the radio off. But I didn’t.

I should have known Roth would be on his pulpit advocating the bleakest kind of atheism that insists on thinking about, no, dwelling on, a non-hereafter that consists solely of worm food.

I can tolerate worm-food talk nine times out of ten, if busy with some other task and not alone. Unluckily, this time it caught me on a Monday off with lots of time on my hands and Drew at work, which made this one of those one times out of ten, where I have a full anxiety attack with the sweating, the hyperventilating, and the charmingly crazy-looking repeating of one phrase over and over again.

A pretty constant diet of good Sunday sermons (good ones) and some choir practice usually keeps these attacks at bay, but lately, I have been unable to face trying to find a good Sunday sermon. In spite of the fact that there are probably 100 churches in this town, I am guessing that good Sunday sermons might be found at 2 of them, and so far, I haven’t had the stomach to find them.

Luckily, I recently checked an Anne Lamott book out of the library, and I grabbed it looking for some relief. So far, I haven’t found that, but it has kept my mind busy.

Don’t worry about me. Just keep the worm-food talk down to a minimum.

Thank you and sleep well.

Sorry.

Next time - less death.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, piglet, I like Philip Roth and I enjoyed the interview. I agree about your chances of finding a good sermon in town. My son has a medication he takes for anxiety attacks and he finds it most helpful. Kind thoughts to you.

DT said...

the trick is, if you have too many things going on at once (like school, work, full time physical training and full time professional eating), you have no time to think about your own mortality...

Anonymous said...

dean, what a wise young man you are.

But I must say from your list of Favorite Movies - your parents have been remiss - there's no Monty Python listed. Start with the Holy Grail. You do want to be a well rounded and worldly-wise American (there are so few).

piglet said...

I believe that's simply a memory slip on Dean's part. He owns most of them. If he doesn't own them, he's borrowed them from me.

piglet said...

...and thanks for the change of subject :-)