In the tarot deck, the Death card does not necessarily represent physical death. It represents severe, cataclysmic change — out with the old, in with the new, every possibility twisting and collapsing into a singularity.
There are days when I don’t know my own skin, where I am disgusted by the thing I’ve become. I wake up, check my e-mail, drink my coffee, exercise, go to work, bang on my laptop for a while, sit in traffic, maybe rehearse a play, kiss my sleeping wife, dick around on the computer. My life is safe and neat and foursquare. And I don’t know anyone, least of all myself.
I’m thinking of chucking it and writing a new life. I did this before, in 1994, when I moved from Boston to San Francisco. The wife would come along (naturally; I love her) but otherwise, new stories would have to be written; contracts must be developed; intellectual property rights must be negotiated; tests of my abilities must be administered; background checks must be completed; new headshots must be taken; the dotted line must be signed. Until then, nothing is guaranteed and everything is possible. There is a roulette wheel, with every possible outcome whizzing around me, red black red black green red black, and if I lose my sense of balance I will fall.
Fuck me, this rain just won’t let up.
Furthermore your new headshots would probably end up promoting a line of leather scuba accessories in Cleveland.
Why not, if there’s royalties in it.
I was there too.
So, maybe, in the film version, we could play each other.