Death

When my nephew was six or seven years old, he composed a short poem which still gives me chills -- he had no idea what it meant (or maybe he did) and I have no idea how he wrote it, but it's as deep and dark as anything I've read:

Soon it comes to every person,
See it happen in one black curtain

Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, are names from my youth who have now gone behind the black curtain. Not to mention the far more disturbing murder of Neda Soltani, whose life bled away in front of us, her eyes staring off into that infinite distance only the dying see.

I wrote this on Twitter: "With the loss of anyone famous what we're really mourning is the passage of our own lives, their death a marker on OUR journey."

I wrote it because death is ever-present and life is ever-shrinking. For some of us, death is an obsession, for others, barely an afterthought. My childhood was bombs and bullets and bodies and burning buildings, so I'm of the former. The thought of eternal non-existence is unthinkable, mortifying beyond words. If that's the fate that awaits us, it's a wonder that we don't all curl up and scream in endless horror. Some people do, figuratively.

Death is life's greatest motivator, for good and evil, fueling our futile quest to 'matter' - futile, because the people we seek to 'matter to' are themselves reaching out to us to give them meaning. It's like two jumpers hurtling to earth, each reaching for the other, but neither with a foothold and both doomed to the same end. Some try to matter by helping others, some by hurting others, all with the desire to be remembered, to bridge an unbridgeable gap, to leave some kind of a mark, to prove that they existed.

Humans are impossibly lonely creatures, staring forlornly into time and space, without an anchor or a reference point, probing the depths of physics, philosophy, psychology, poetry, but forever bumping up against the unknowable.

My father, who died a decade ago, adored Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat -- this quatrain in particular:

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help--for it
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Searching for the light behind the dark curtain, we turn to religion, to faith, to drugs, to music, to love. We get a glimmer of hope with stories of near death and other paranormal experiences. We meditate and pray. We look to nature and art and beauty. We dream.

And I think we do get glimpses of the light behind the curtain. In hypnagogic states (the twilight before sleep), in moments of transcendence when our thinking brain is suspended, in vague remembrances of a home, a place of origin whose location is timeless and dimensionless, in the sudden opening -- and closing -- of a portal during moments of intense fear and love and pain and pleasure, in the stillness of night and nature, in strange confluences and coincidences, in the inexplicable faith that somehow, somewhere, there is an answer.

It's amusing to me that science, in its quest to deconstruct and debunk, has reaffirmed the ephemerality of the physical world -- quantum theory paints a wonderful and mysterious picture of a universe that is merely thought and potential. Just imagine that when you look out across the horizon, everything in your sight is energy, nothing solid, and that it's all a thought in your mind. And that you are a thought in someone else's mind.

We've seen the black curtain this week and it gives us pause, as it should, and it hurts, as it must. Still, we have reason to believe that behind the curtain is something even more mysterious, more frightening and more beautiful than the world we know.

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UPDATE: shireengonz, one of the commenters in the discussion thread below, recommends a gripping video that raises fascinating questions about the subject of this post:

Follow Peter Daou on Twitter: www.twitter.com/peterdaou

Comments

[Hoelder]

It just means you are getting old. No more, no less. I do not need Michael Jackson to be reminded of the irony of dying. A sad life and a sad end. Besides we have more important matters to take care of. Matters of the living: Health care, global warming etc. If we mourned everybody we know famous or not, we would miss our own life.

[Peter Daou - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, fair point, but ironically, the things you mention as matters of the living (health care, global warming) are also matters of death and dying.

[RosieLee]

"It just means you are getting old."

It also means you're getting wiser. That wisdom is a vital prerequisite of attempting to solving the huge practical challenges you mention too, as opposed to making them worse.

It seems perfectly possible to me to mourn a little of our our own death, and the deaths of those close to us whom we've lost, in every death we encounter and to learn and grow as humans through such experiences.

Individuals of our species are more than just groups of isolated atoms bouncing around in a skin and much more than simply organic machines. Like Atticus, we can step outside of our own skins, step inside someone else's and walk around in it. As the video demonstrates so compellingly, we need to develop this universal and spiritual dimension of ourselves, that which connects us to the universe, to God and to each other, as well as developing our more materialist and individualistic dimensions.

[Dolmance]

Everyone's turning into the crying hysteric on YouTube who was bemoaning the way the press was treating Brittney Spears.

I have to consider that it's a case of alien seed pods taking over human beings while they're sleeping and replacing them with terminally frivolous, silly, histrionic fan-oids who I wish would go see a psychiatrist and for the news media to stop catering to. The way people are acting, you'd think JFK had just been shot in Dallas.

Yes, Ed McMahon is now standing with Christ, along with Jacko and Farah. They're wearing white robes and looking down on us with empathy, understanding and mucho, mucho sympathy. (whine, snivel, snurk)

[JackDermand]

Very well said. Well done.

[Peter Daou - Huffpost Blogger]

Thank you and to the commenters below for the good words about the post. I really appreciate it.

[Emerald1943]

Very deep and very moving. Thank you, Peter.

[jobecky20]

Thank you for posting this. Incredible.

[Sarahlein]

Wow--this left me speechless for a bit. You managed to put in to words my emotions and bring some order to my chaotic thoughts. Simply, beautifully said.

[GrainOSand]

On Legacy

Please allow me to utilize ancient written thought, loosely termed philosophy to offer a different take on the implications of legacy.

“My master Lieh-dze asked Yin, (the warden) of the gate, saying, 'The perfect man walks under water without encountering any obstruction, treads on fire without being burned, and walks on high above all things without any fear; let me ask how he attains to do this?' The warden Yin replied, 'It is by his keeping of the pure breath (of life); it is not to be described as an achievement of his skill or daring. Sit down, and I will explain it to you. Whatever has form, semblance, sound, and colour is a thing; how can one thing come to be different from another? But it is not competent for any of these things to reach to what preceded them all;—they are but (form and) visibility. But (the perfect man) attains to be (as it were) without form, and beyond the capability of being transformed.”
http://ratmachines.com/philosophy/chuang-tzu-legge/chapter-19

The death of any is a reflection on us all. Thoughts of permanence are often disturbed by the immediacy of change. Most quests for something not held have a certain futile quality. Better to check out the bird in the hand instead of any promised two in the bush. Seeking is tiring and can be frustrating, where living and realizing what you will, there is no futility in that.

[GrainOSand]

II
'To act by means of inaction is God. To speak by means of inaction is exemplification of Tao. To love men and care for things in charity. To recognize the unlike as the like is breadth of view. To make no distinctions is liberal. To possess variety is wealth. And so, to hold fast to virtue is strength. To complete virtue is establishment. To follow Tao is to be prepared. And not to run counter to the natural bias of things is to be perfect.

'He who fully realizes these ten points, by storing them within enlarges his heart, and with this enlargement brings all creation to himself. Such a man will bury gold on the hill-side and cast pearls into the sea. He will not struggle for wealth, nor strive for fame. He will not rejoice at old age, nor grieve over early death. He will find no pleasure in success, no chagrin in failure. He will not account a throne as his own private gain, nor the empire of the world as glory personal to himself. His glory is to know that all things are One, and that life and death are but phases of the same existence!'

http://www.universal-tao-eproducts.com/taoism-resources/ChuangTzu12UTEP.html

Far from coveting definition and a need to find meaning and leave a legacy, one may simply adhere to their nature beyond contemplation of gain, religion, politics, or social order dictating ceremonial death and remembrance.

[Schell]

Thank you. Unfortunately, most people only think of their mortality during these brief moments when, as you say, a marker such as a celebrity death, appears. Imagine what life would be like if we all realized that we are, indeed mortal. I suspect that if the average person considered the eventuality of their death more often, there would be a sharp decline in activities such as television watching and other time wasters. Imagine a world in which people not only expected death, but, as a result, respected life.

[zagyzebra]

This is one of the most beautiful essays on the perplexing struggle of life and death. It has helped illuminate the reason I feel so profoundly sad, and alternately happy, over the news of Michael Jackson's death. It explains why I, also 50ish, feel this sudden drive to do something -- anything -- to bring solutions to the myriad of problems facing our world. Michael Jackson marks the death of a generation of innocence, my generation. One sandwiched between the Vietnam war and aids. Pre-aids, pre-911, pre-global economic meltdown, pre-internet, pre-rap, the U.S. was still admired and loved, resources were plentiful, cancer had not reached its epidemic proportions. Looking back, Michael Jackson came to age, and brought the rest of us along with him, in a period that seemed almost blissful compared to the magnitude of troubles that face us today. We'll miss you, Michael, and thank you for some of the best music of our lifetimes, and all the good times and innocence that music conjures up.

[Margot101]

A poetic yet practical ode to death, Peter. Well done. We can only truly start to live when we acknowledge our own mortality.

[Balzac]

First.

[FromthePitofDespair1]

One of the most poignant essays I have ever read. I have no idea why I cried at the news Michael Jackson was dead. I hadn't given him much thought for over a decade. He was some kind of pathetic freak. A sad soul. A narccisist. Someone lost in the artificiality of life.

But reading this, now I know. Thank you for such a beautiful essay. One I will keep until I myself
die and fade out of the human consciousness for all time.

[secret38b]

Michael's death makes me want to go out and save the world. My heart truly hurts, and I cannot stop crying. I'm sure, I'll stop eventually, but right now, I just cannot.........:o(