On Mortality: A Message for the Undertaker

From her journals:

I don't wanna die. I was thinking the other day that I should have that tattooed someplace on my person, somewhere in small letters, like

I dont
wanna
die

maybe in the middle of my chest or inside my arm or my ankle, inconspicuous and small. I was thinking about the undertaker who with my cold and white body laying stiff on his stainless steel table would find the small tattoo and read it. I don't wanna die. A message for the undertaker, for my lover, for God, for my aging skin. I would like to see his face, the undertaker's.

Actually I'd like ot be buried w/out an undertaker sucking out my insides, filling me w/ formaldahyde, putting color on my dead face - I wish I could be put in a deep hole in the brown earth and covered over, thats all, Indian like. Animal like.

Neal Cassidy was cremated. (T-shirt: God bless the ashes of Neal's bones.) Ashes aren't very useful, though, whereas a body in the ground is good for the soil.

- September 1981