(shern and I, India. Shern's short story, written after visiting the Burning Ghats in Varanasi, where families travel from all over India to burn their dead. Written on location. Shern is my boy that I traveled in India with. We have known each other since preschool.enjoy...)
When confronted with death, most recollect from the same well of experience, that of lost pets and televised murder and perhaps the emotional context of a close family member passed.
We sit in restaurants waiting for meat as we wait for a tape to finish rewinding; our closest daily encounter with death, merely seen as a moderate though necessary convenience. One that ironically sustains our living. Seeing an animal on the road side, or a dead dog on the street, however peaceful they lay -before the flies, the eternal custodians of living existence arrive- although a more distilled experience of death, is still just an unpleasant after thought, after the experience. We encounter death every single day.
On the way to work, at lunch, on television sets in waiting rooms, during an evening stroll in the park; these mostly weighing equal in our grand experience of what death is...
An idea.
An obscure notion. A form of rationale. For some, a philosophy.
And as death, as life, is a constant companion to our realities, it is perhaps the least understood, the least contemplated, and the most disassociated. When death is too close, when death has a face we recognize, it is not us, but them. They met a demise we somehow assume we'll avoid. Not us, it's not possible, time is not taken but given, and it's ours. We live forever after all... don't we?
Unless of course, it is directly in front of us, free of our ideas and staring with cold slate eyes, unwavering in its resolve. When we actually see another dead human being, it is an assault, a slap in the face of our false and ephemeral immortality. For a brief and uncomfortable moment we remember what we had not actually forgotten, but merely pushed to the corner of the room, under the carpet, that we are going to face the same fate. That death is behind us, chasing always, gaining steadily, encroaching upon our fallacious immortality.
And then, it is death that unites us; that of the dead dog, that of the television, that of the faceless obituary, for a fleeting capture of time, we see that we are all the same. Perhaps for some, this juxtaposition creates a reversal of symbols: Death real, life figurative.
But that time passes. It has to. We need to forget. We remember that death is an uninvited guest at an already crowded table. Life becomes real, and death an idea once more, an abstract concept.
As I sit on the banks of the river Ganga, my eyes burn and my throat is choked. I can feel the heat on my ears as I struggle to find words, words that are perhaps enabling me to objectify death, using them to draw from its essence what my heart should be experiencing solely. But when I shake my hair and brush my arms, I realize that I am surrounded by death. These are the ashes of those fallen that once again dance in the winds around me, that are lulled into the sky on the notes of a solitary flute and swept into the Ganga through the tears of their mourners. This is a scene that is played daily. Flames spring from overpriced timber, enveloping bodies that may have chopped the same trees. It is small, but still a microcosm of life.
I ask only to remember.
- Sorry I took so long to type that up, I've had so much to do since I've been back. Although I did run a spell check, this is exactly how it was written in my journal. Otherwise, it's pretty raw and unedited,
and exactly how I wanted it to be read.
Peace big boy. Shern -
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