A few weeks ago I was feeling bored and restless (as one does during a pandemic), when I suddenly remembered: I know how to draw! So I broke out my Prismacolors, as I have not done in many a moon, and with little forethought drew this Fudō Myōō. Known as “the Immovable Wisdom King,” Fudō Myōō is most often depicted seated on a stone to symbolize that immovability, but here is shown seated on a lotus amid the flames, a symbol of the Middle Way of Buddhism. It may be that many people conceive of Buddhist practice as little more than navel-gazing, but don’t be deceived: to face life directly requires a fierce and steadfast spirit.

On a technical note, I’m afraid the photo can’t really do justice to the image, and you’ll just have to take my word that the colors are astonishingly vibrant. This was my first time using Prismacolor markers in combination with the color pencils, and I was amazed at the saturation. Feel like it’s what I’ve been looking for for years.

I find the name revealing: okcupid,
all lower case, as though its creators want
to lower expectations from the outset. Don’t ask
too much, they gently hint. Our silicon love-
god is only okay. If you want a heart on fire,
you’ll have to work to light the arrow.

Or, to be more accurate, a hundred arrows,
shot with thumbs alone by a glazed-eyed Cupid
ensconced on the couch, belly full of ice cream, firing
off messages at a crowd of tiny pixels, wanting
to sound clever, funny, honest, worthy of love
and attention, pondering the right thing to ask

someone he knows very little about, while asking
whether it’s worth it, given the slings and arrows
of our current outrageous fortune, the likelihood of love
during a pandemic. And incidentally, why is Cupid
a fat little baby, anyway? I don’t even want
kids. Shouldn’t he (or she) be some Polynesian fire-

dancer, sweat-damp skin gleaming, torch fires
spinning in the ocean-scented dark? Let’s ask
more from our match- and myth-makers. I want
a passion cosmic, our bodies comets, bright arrows
arcing across sheets of night, a belted Cupid
usurping Orion to bestride the skies with love.

Or, equally, a simple, unencumbered love,
someone with whom I can sit by the fire,
talk about books, make out, mock okcupid,
go dancing, do yoga, take long walks, ask
intimate questions, watch fucking Arrow
on late-night if that’s what we want.

(Probably not. Terrible show.) Point is, I want
what anyone wants: an ordinary transcendent love
that today, alas, is found by pressing the arrow
keys to scroll up and down, inserting fire
emojis like ammo in a catapult, asking
one last favor from an artificial Cupid.

Let’s finally fire whoever runs okcupid.
Message me, ask whatever you want.
Make a joke about arrows. Fall in love.

MY DEAR ____, — Desperate times call for desperate measures, and as it appears social calling, much less the merry magnificence of a ball, has been eradicated by the State and indeed by Necessity, I am setting out this letter like a castaway throwing a message in a bottle upon the waves. I am told that goddesses are often born upon the foam, so perhaps you will spy it amid much other storm-tossed debris; but perhaps I have been reading too much of Mr. Keats and Mr. Defoe.

In truth I do not find solitude burdensome as a rule; to the contrary, when one is at peace with oneself, dwelling alone is domestic bliss. Yet any good thing may be taken to excess (Meden agan, reads the Delphic temple), and the spirit left too long alone begins to grow inward, like a rootbound plant, stunting its growth. And growth is the essence of love, it seems to me, each encouraging the other like devoted arborists.

Of course, to intertwine our sylvan limbs in these divided days requires reaching a little further. The space between us may seem insurmountable, but think of the joy, nay, the ecstasy, such surmounting brings. A flutter of the fingers (upon your keys), a few strokes (with a pen), can bring every bough to fruition, every bud to unfold, every fruit to fall satisfied upon a bed of fragrant flowers. The clouds part, the sun shines in splendor, the earth is born anew.

But if you find such language overheated, let us get down to brass tacks. I am forty-three years old and in exceptional health, exercising daily. I stand five feet nine inches and weigh one hundred and fifty-five pounds. You know I am of good family, and while it is perhaps vulgar to mention, my estate at Pemberly provides a comfortable income, and expansive grounds for riding or other entertainments. In summer the gardens are green as emerald, and in winter we often have recitals in the parlor. You could make a home here, or just come for a night or two.

I hope I have presented my views, my person and my heart’s longing as directly or sidelong as the occasion requires. Words are poor substitutes for the immediacy of the senses. Perhaps someday we will meet, in a park or sidewalk cafe, let fall our masks and gratefully receive each other’s expressions of spontaneous delight. Then these obstacles will prove mere markers on the path, this waiting a whetstone, and the pandemic itself a portal for something rare and wondrous.

Until then I am, devotedly,

J.T.

P.S. I hope you will not listen to any rumors that my estate is greatly exaggerated, my horses phantasms, and my actual income a pittance. There are all kinds of characters out there, spinning airy fictions in the hope of a moment’s amusement.

This April evening

how delighted the finches,

how quiet the streets!

What follows is a letter that I wrote to my brother Sean Tagert some months ago, after he had posted a very dark and despairing message online, and first mentioned medically assisted death. I hope it provided some comfort to him then; perhaps it can bring some comfort to his friends and family now. Rest in peace, brother.

Dear Sean:

I read your post on Facebook and knew I had to write. Really I should have written long ago, but life has a way of carrying us quickly along.

I wish I could be there for you now; I wish also that I could have been closer for all these many years. It is curious that throughout my adult life, I have been essentially a bystander to my own family, but then it also seems that this was something decided many years ago. I come for a visit once a year, more or less, and these week-long glimpses are all I really know of my mother and siblings. There are great chapters of your life I know nothing about, whole relationships passed unnoticed, titanic struggles unmarked.

This includes the progress of your ALS, the steady, infinitely cruel erosion of your health and abilities. I literally cannot imagine your suffering. But I am sorry for what you have been made to endure.

With that said, I want also to offer some thoughts on living and dying, as you are, clearly, in extremis. I have no particular experience with death, beyond being certain to experience it eventually; but maybe that’s enough. My hope is to ease your pain: not your physical pain, which is clearly out of reach, but your mental, emotional, and spiritual pain, the turmoil of the heart.

It hurts me to think that I will soon lose my brother, but it hurts me yet more to hear the despair in your voice. It’s not that it’s surprising – as I said, no one but you can know what you’re going through – but now, more than ever, I hope you can feel at peace.

Yes, at peace – peace without limit, like the starry night sky, or the waves of the ocean, or the laughter of a child. I mean a peace beyond the reach of the world’s dust, a peace so deep that when you feel it you know that you have never really been apart from it, because it is you. It is your very flesh and bone, indeed it is a peace beyond flesh and bone. It is the peace of connection: of oneness with all things, just as they are.

This is, from one standpoint, a very Buddhist view, but I trust you will see that it is not just some sectarian doctrine. It’s inherent in being. In the realest, ultimate sense, you are the world. You are the air you breathe, the food you eat; you are the sound of the music, and the feel of the bedsheets; you are the yapping dog and door closing; perhaps most of all, you are the people around you, you are Aidan and Mom and Leah and everyone else.

Ultimately you have no edges, and this is proven true in death. We return from whence we came, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And just as there was a time before you were born, there will be a time after you have died; and seeing this, you will see that existence and nonexistence are essentially the same thing. They’re two sides of the same coin.

So please, don’t say that you’ve failed. In life there is no real failure; there is only the mysterious movement of energy in the present, the unceasing, ever-flowing Tao. Alan Watts said that life ought not be regarded as a journey with a serious end, that may be achieved or not, but should rather be seen as “a musical thing – you were supposed to sing and dance while the music was playing.”

So sing and dance! (Okay, not literally, in your case. 😉) Celebrate your life! Remember the joy you’ve had, and treasure each moment remaining. And if it comes time to end it, do so with all the grace and good humor you can muster. Gather your loved ones together, wish them well, and wave to them as you pass into the great beyond. Dying, as you know better than me, is hard; but death itself, I am certain, is a return to limitless connection, by which I mean limitless joy.

You said that [your son] Aidan would be devastated by your passing. You may of course be right. But it seems to me there is one last gift you can give him, one last lesson you can impart: how to die well.

Life, after all, is a gift. It comes to us free of charge, no strings attached. Each moment, each sensation, each memory, is a blessing. What better, then, than to pass on that gift, to communicate this same spirit of gratitude to those who will follow you?

We have been given many such blessings. I want to end this letter with two, both, as it happens, involving riding in a car with you. The first was in Hawaii, when I was twenty-three or twenty-four and you were twenty-two or so. We were driving back from Kona side, from kayaking at Kealakekua Bay, and the sun had set. Lindsey and I were in the front seat, and you were with Naoko [a Japanese girl staying with us at the time] in the back, asleep or nearly so, with her head on your shoulder. And as we rode along the curving road through the jungle valleys near Hilo, like a car in a dream, Leonard Cohen was playing on the stereo, singing his sad gentle songs:

Who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry, merry month of May,
Who by very slow decay,
And who shall I say is calling?

The second was more recent, when I visited you in Langley. You drove me to the airport in your convertible, your right hand (though already withering from the ALS) moving the stick shift swiftly through the gears. As we crossed over the Port Mann Bridge, the sun breaking through the clouds and the wind streaming in our hair, I knew very well that this would be the last time I would ride with my brother like this. And it occurred to me then that likewise it was the last time you would ride with me; that your life and my life were, in that brilliant moment, one. Tears streamed down my cheeks behind my sunglasses, though perhaps you didn’t notice; tears are streaming down my cheeks now.

With the greatest love, your brother,

Joel

May you rest in perfect peace, Sean Patrick Tagert (Sept. 14, 1978 – Aug. 6, 2019). Sean passed away peacefully at his home in Powell River, B.C., surrounded by his family and loved ones, shortly after 3 p.m. yesterday. He was perfectly lucid, having refused most painkillers, and courageous to the last.

Sean was diagnosed with ALS in March 2013. For years he endured the steady deterioration of his abilities, until suffering cardiac arrest in late Oct. 2017. He was resuscitated and placed on a ventilator, and lived since then on life support, completely immobile, communicating only via an eye-tracking computer setup. Finally, with his health rapidly deteriorating, Sean opted for a medically assisted death. His family gives special thanks to those medical professionals who helped ease his suffering with grace and steadiness. The family would also like to express their heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Stephen Burns, Sean’s longtime doctor, for his continual care and devotion; to Jennifer Goodson, Sean’s occupational therapist and a ray of sunshine in dark days; to the many caregivers who lovingly tended Sean’s needs over the years; and to the ALS Society of British Columbia and the Caya Society for their support of families in crisis. Per Sean’s wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service, but those who would like to remember him are encouraged to donate to these organizations.

Ensuring consistent care was a constant struggle and source of stress for Sean as a patient. While he succeeded, with the help of many, in piecing together a suitable care facility in his own home (including an expensive saliva-suction machine, needed to prevent him from choking, obtained with the help of donations raised online), gaining the 24-hour care he required was extremely difficult, especially as the provincial government refused to fully fund home care. The few institutional options on hand, Sean pointed out, would have offered vastly inferior care while separating him from his family, and likely would have hastened his death. We would ask, on Sean’s behalf, that the government recognize the serious problems in its treatment of ALS patients and their families, and find real solutions for those already suffering unimaginably.

Those who knew Sean will remember him as particularly funny, active and vibrant. As a kid he was always one to take a dare, delighting in tricks on his BMX bike, skateboard or snowboard. He always kept himself fit; in fact he first noticed something was wrong physically because when he was weightlifting, one side of his body seemed to getting weaker rather than stronger. He was extremely capable, working as a large-engine mechanic, and loved cars, in particular his 2001 Honda S-2000, tearing around with the top down and music blasting. Even when he had lost the ability to speak, he retained his sense of humor, recording a Youtube video of himself in the hospital drinking a Guinness via his feeding tube.

While born in Texas (his father is American), Sean spent most of his life in Canada. He grew up in Mackenzie, B.C., and worked in the sawmill until moving away to Edmonton, Alberta. Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, Sean met his wife, Sharlene, at a dance organized by congregation members there. Soon they had a son, Aidan, the light of Sean’s life. Later the family moved to Arizona, where Sean developed a love of Mexican and Latino culture, food and music. After four years there, the family decided to return to Canada, living first in Langley, B.C., and then Powell River.

Above all else Sean was devoted to his son, Aidan (who is the spitting image of his father, in appearance and personality). Sean often said that Aidan was his reason for living, and had a close relationship with him right to the end. In fact some of Sean’s last words of conversation (via his computer), in the very hour of his death, were to and about Aidan. Aidan and Shar were talking about a vacation the family had taken to Mexico, and the food they liked, and others chimed in to discuss Mexican versus Hawaiian papayas. “I love papayas,” Aidan said.

“I don’t think it was papayas,” Shar replied. “I think it was mangoes from one of the street vendors. You ate like three of them.” And Sean wrote:

You lovvved the Mexican mangoes with the chile spice
the vendor was amazed
it was
like an animal at a bone

Of course he said more, over and over expressing his love for his family. We love you too, we replied, holding his hands, rubbing his arms and shoulders, kissing his forehead. We always will.

“At present, most of us do nothing. We look away. We remain calm. We are silent. We take refuge in the hope that the holocaust won’t happen, and turn back to our individual concerns. We deny the truth that is all around us. Indifferent to the future of our kind, we grow indifferent to one another. We drift apart. We grow cold. We drowse our way toward the end of the world. But if once we shook off our lethargy and fatigue and began to act, the climate would change. Just as inertia produces despair – a despair often so deep that it does not even know itself as despair – arousal and action would give us access to hope, and life would start to mend: not just life in its entirety but daily life, every individual life. At that point, we would begin to withdraw from our role as both the victims and the perpetrators of mass murder. We would no longer be the destroyers of mankind but, rather, the gateway through which the future generations would enter the world. Then the passion and will that we need to save ourselves would flood into our lives. Then the walls of indifference, inertia, and coldness that now isolate each of us from others would melt, like snow in spring.”

– Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth

I am honestly shocked at how bad season 8 episode 4 of Game of Thrones was. I heard the complaints about episode 3 and thought, “Whatever, it’s still an incredible spectacle. Best zombie battle ever.” But this was just… awful. Like the Sand Snakes awful. Like twenty scenes of Theon getting tortured awful. Forced plots, bad dialogue, characters we care deeply about acting in ways completely inconsistent with everything that’s gone before. How can a show that cost hundreds of millions – billions? – to produce lose all sense of itself right at the climax? What the hell happened in that room of screenwriters?

So, I’m going to do us all a favor and rewrite the ending. Fan fiction FTW! Here’s what should have happened from episode 3 onward (sort-of-spoilers abound):
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