Love n Death

Just talk a walk to the local cemetry to look at the muntjack deer. Male with 2 hinds and a nother 2 hinds seen. Also got to thinking again about this issue of death, separation, reproduction, sex and love. They are all connected but can't quite see clearly.

To be separated from someone requires 2 things. First that u have known the person and second that they are gone. The more u have known them the more the separation. Death of course is the greatest separation because the person is completely dissolved - it is existential as opposed to just obscurity between existing persons.

Now why is it that we form relationships with people? If we lived forever would we not naturally know everyone at some stage? If we were not separated already from people why the need to close that gap? We have not lived for ever, and we will not live forever so we gradually form bonds as time progresses and we gradually lose them just the same.

Friendship and love is born directly out the fact that mortality is in our very bones. We are separate from other people, and we know ultimately that they will be gone so we form bonds to try and stop that deep down inevitability.

Biologically it is the same. Sex is born from the process of reproduction, and that born from the process of death. Why have more kids if we lived forever? So the union between man and woman is born directly from the intrinsic fact that man and woman, humans in both sexual forms, are mortal and need to replace themselves after death.

Given all this I am beginning to see th irony in mourning the death of lovers especially but also friends. We becae lovers because we sort to cheat death by reproducing. We became friends because we tried to overcome the separation and finitude of our existence.

So it follows that for everything we do in the realm of relationship it is built upon its complete opposite - the dissolution of relationship, ultimately death. That Death walks among us is plainly evident wih every smile and handshake.

Now this is the bit I can't see. There was a stuffed animal in the bin at the cemetry. Such a poignant reminded of the brutality of death, that it cares for absolutely nothing and noone. I can feel nothing but hate for death. For death we are all our loved stuffed animals ripped from our beds and thrown unceremoniously into the rain. Really i don't hate often but for Death it is unsurmountable.

Yet I am trying to argue here that without Death, my sworn enemy, I would have no friends and no lovers at all! Indeed the world would crash together in a mass of immortal beings in all places and all times.

So the coming of spring, as it is now, and the blossoming of flowers heralding the marriage of the trees (my first poem written April 1997 and beginning a whole lot of stuff since!) the fragrances and colours, is all down to the hand of death challenging mortal trees to seek immortality.

So there is something else i see now! Death can only do what it does on a canvas of time which is unstoppable. Time and Death (rather than Being and Time ;-) ) are dancing entwined for every step that Death takes, Time will step over to the next moment and make a place for all those things that survived or were created anew. Or is it that Death is like a mould that spreads through all things, but growth is also like a mould that spreads through all things.

And between them Death and Time make Change which is the nature of all things because it brings them metamorphosing both growing and dying toward their complete dissolution.

So I have misunderstood the hand of Death and how I have it to thank for everything that I have rejoiced in before and which I now sadly miss. Indeed I knew this from the day I met my muse, I even wrote about it that first sleepless night, that our inevitable separation was the only thing on my mind now that I had met her. Indeed i understood but was afraid. More obviously I should have embraced our being together when it was together, and ebmraced our being apart when we were apart.

This is the nature of ignorance and attachment, and I have learned :-)