Monday, June 06, 2005

Death myth

The other morning I went into the garden and took a picture of a dead bird embryo on the ground being eaten by ants.
It was a Ricky Fitts moment, pondering the hideous beauty of death:


"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from
snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right?
And this bag was like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me
to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew
there was this entire life behind things, and ... this incredibly benevolent
force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be
afraid."


But then I went inside, feeling immensely guilty. Which prolly had to do with my house mate Laura calling me a sick fuck, and figuring she was right.
And then I wondered why the hell it was such a big deal? I mean, why the hell is it wrong to take a picture of a dead creature? Nature just doesn't have morals about death. It just is, and this picture kinda exemplifies how wonderfully complex and interdependent life really is.

But still, I couldn't help it. I can't help being scared of death. Being appalled by it. You'd think that the body of a living being and a dead one are the same, but the thing that has always terrified me about dead bodies of any kind is the lack of soul it has. Especially if it is someone/something you know. Somehow, that someone is not in that body anymore. The body kind of looks the same, but it doesn't at the same time. It's no cliche when they say the body is just a shell. And somewhere, I read this quote about that we are not a body with a soul experience, but a soul with a body experience. And looking at something dead like this is all the proof I need for that, and somehow, that makes even a picture like this one uplifting.

But not then. The pressure of social acceptability won.

I went back outside the next day to unphotograph it, but the foxes had carried it away.

What do I do now?

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