A Consummation Devoutly To Be Wished

[poliphilo]

I think about death all the time.

A couple of years back I was mightily struck with the idea of earthly immortality. There was this mad doctor who was going round saying human life could be indefinitely extended and I was thinking, "Wheeee- what fun it'll be- on and on and on and ...."

Now I can't imagine what got into me. Milennium fever perhaps.

Because now I take comfort- great comfort- from the thought that sooner or later this giddy ride is going to stop. It puts things in perspective. Why get all worked up about- I don't know- the idiocy of the human race- when- quite shortly- I'll be stepping from the car and out through the turnstile? 

I'm 56- and closer to my end than my beginning. Happy days.

Comments

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

I've been reading 'Panatini's end of absolutely everything' and while it's not the end of absolutely everyone, it tells the ending details of a good few people's lives. Artists like Byron, Keats and that lot, and a bunch of presidents, and others.

All dying, giving last words, facing the end.

For sure we don't live with the real specter of death in our faces the way people used to. Imagine inner-city graveyards so filled with the dead they were stacking coffins on top of graves then piling them over with soil so the level of the land gradually crept up the sides of the church?

Quagmires of sloshy bone and mulch.

Things are so sterile now. For sure that's to be appreciated. But it just puts us one remove further from the reality of death.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't want the old city graveyards back- no way.

But I'm not sure we really shut ourselves off from death. Look at all those TV shows set in hospitals...

All those films and TV shows featuring gruesome homicides and forensic procedures and autopsies...