(joyful) notes on life & death
to feel alive in the death of winter, to fear death in the birth of spring
There is black snake crawling up my arm, scarring my clavicles. There are pomegranates, growing through flowers, inked through my skin. There is a statue carved on my flesh, the pieces of a forever garden.
The snake, the pomegranate, hyped on symbolism and religiosity, feels like a sacrilege to be inked on an atheist. Or an agnostic, I’m not yet decided. A once painful garden now peaceful, it’ll survive my consciousness by days, weeks even maybe month.
Every year, at the first symptoms of spring, an existential rebirth falls on me. I follow the cycles, I can’t help it. I live and die everyday, my body regenerates itself, it shed and turns to blood and dust bit by bit. Ever growing, ever dying, never stopping.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t consumed by death. Not in a morbid way but in a curious yet fearful way. Death is not a confrontation but a conversation. I interrogate myself, what needs to be done for me to welcome Death rather than run away from it? I know I can’t run forever, sometimes I’m already out of breath.
Every night I die a little, a descent into winter, into the dark, into the unknown. Every night I explore a new world, every morning I resurface. Every morning I’m reborn, an ascent into spring, into the day, into the unknown.
In some versions of Genesis, it is a pomegranate Eve eats and not an apple. Sinning to know, dying to believe.
I went through phases where i was obsessed with saying goodnight, see you tomorrow to my parents before going to bed. If I forgot to say those words, i went back downstairs to perform my morbid rituals, because if i said so, i would see them tomorrow - i had survived the night. A selfish obsession of my own mortality i can’t shake to this day.
I know people die, i accept it. I don’t want to live forever but long enough to make something out of the air i breathe through my lungs to my brain. Merely existing would never be enough.
Most nights i no longer need to reassure myself by saying it, but some nights i still do. good night, see you tomorrow. The panic takes over and i can’t sleep, too scared this will be it and i haven’t even visited Iraq yet.1 Some nights i can almost feel my blood vessels bursting in my brain, my heart, my lungs, tomorrow i will turn to stone.
On a recent walk i noticed the tiny pink flowers growing on cherry trees. The wind blew my hood, i felt the rain pearling on my cheeks, soaking up my hair. I heard a concert of birds singing through the winter and into spring. I stood there a minute longer, gorging on the rain.
Everything must die a little to grow, to blossom, to be fruitful. A storm of pink petals will soon cover the ground, but for now they are attached strongly, it is not time.
Raining on my skin, the cold reaches my bones and i’m alive.
I have replaced one mortal worry with another by planning my funeral. I’m not ill. Sure i do have chronic chest pain that doctors don’t care that much about, but it gets better. I’m not old, 28 going on 29, still get IDied at Tesco when i buy beers. I don’t do many reckless things, i drink a bit - a bit too much maybe - but i don’t smoke, even the occasional cigarettes have gone, nor do drugs and i barely drive. No, nothing could take me out but my own stress.
So, my funeral.
I will be the only one wearing black let me tell you that, everyone better come in one of those stupid beach theme party outfits i have been forced to wear too many times.
Female morticians only, for obvious reasons.
I will make a playlist, Architects’ the distant blue will send me away. Then my ‘party’ playlist for the reception; people will dance I’m not worried.
I’m not decided if i’d rather end up in flame or in soil, ash or dust. Take this as a you problem, i won’t be there to feel it.
On recent walks;
05:43, the ground is frozen under my feet, under the puppy’s paws. A warm wind reminds me spring is coming. The sun is rising earlier than last week already.
10:27, i stand in the sun. The frost is gone and the grass is wet. A cup of coffee warms my fingers, turned purple and pink.
18:30, our walk starts under bright orange and soft pink sky and ends under a starry sky. Ever since the concert last Friday, i could swear the sky is further away than usual. It isn’t looming right above my head anymore.
Last week i could have picked up a star.
This is a haunting preoccupation of mine.