Earmuffs

I spent the summer working in Toronto, there I got to know a really fun and creative girl, she shares my love of words. Her primary creative focus is painting, I've seen her work in oil, very unrestricted and abstract. She has promised me a painting but has yet to deliver. I'm not going to rush her, when it comes to waiting for things I have a Jobian Patience. When I transferred back to my home location I found that I missed our daily conversations.

We began a game of email tag, we would take turns posing a question and then try to answer it in the most creative way that we could. One day she brought this question to the virtual table. "after you die what is the most interesting thing that you could have done with your remains"? In my reply I described an elaborate ritual of cremation. followed by a scattering of my ashes upon distant lands, that in life I had failed to visit. I made my descriptions of the places as visually beautiful as I could, I used a very somber tone, I built into it a reverence for the earth and its peoples.


That night I thought again about the topic. I felt it was to morbid for my taste, though I liked the way it had stretched my imagination. I felt that it needed to be balanced with humour, and an absurd humour at that.

The next day I wrote this,

An additional request for the handling of my remains. I have always had nipples of a rather large size. They have caused gym class ridicule and beach front embarrassment. To this day when someone suggests a shirts and skins basketball game I enter a state of full blown panic.

I don't wish to take them with me on my journey into the afterlife. Before cremation, my nipples will be removed and sent to a tanner, after the tanning process is complete, fine fleece needs to be fitted into their inner surface. I would like a master craftsman to fashion my tanned and padded nipples into a pair of earmuffs.

It would please and honor me so, that if on the coldest of days you would wear them. At that point I believe my spirit could rest knowing that my nipples, something the caused me such grief in life, were now keeping warm the ears of a dear friend.

If on a cold winters night you were to wear your nipple-muffs and walk alone into a silent glade of the forest, I am sure that you would hear the echo of my beating heart.

Are you smiling?