SubscribeFebruary 20th, 2012
David Lee, another poem
I’ve been thinking about death today. The thing is that I don’t view death as a tragedy really, not in the sense of a fall, or as in opposition to life. Death for me is only those moments when the system is breaking down, moving outside the narrow parameters of balance that keep it ticking over. Once the cell (or body) system steps too far past that chemical harmony then “death” vanishes like colour from bleached hair. At that point that which was the cell or the body is now the functioning—important in its own right—chemical material (the cell’s corpse) from which life might, or might not, arise when the material is recombined at some future time and place.
Anyway, I was reading this evening from Lee’s book and found this wondrous poem. Exactly, I want to tell him. Exactly.
On Turning Up a Fossil in My Garden Natural extinction need not connote a forced or meaningless fall into oblivion: instead, one of the simple facts of life, the ultimate fate of all species, not tainted by a stigma of failure: like breath, frequent in occurrence but unworthy of inordinate praise, not especially provocative as conversation. As when two lovers cease their heavy breathing, and part, and the moonlight seeps into a darkened room: seem clearly with no apprehension, animosity, fear.
From Lee’s So Quietly the Earth
February 20th, 2012 at 4:33 am
Which gives me a good question: why do people make a big moral focus on natural processes, like abortion, childbirth, and the like?
February 20th, 2012 at 9:09 am
I think the answer to that may depend on the group. The Current crop of GOP candidates in the US (the ones trying to disrupt a woman’s civil right to control her own body) seem to make such processes a big moral focus because of some misogynistic pathology. I rather don’t think this is really moral at all. But generally, is the human concern for women’s reproduction a moral issue at all? Or just a paler version of this same pathology? That I’m not so sure about. I rather think that human morals must be tied to biological issues that effect the possible endurance or demise of the species – like our revulsion with respect to things like necrophilia or other practices that would end us should they become common place. But there are lots of those kind of practices (domestic abuse and murder, for example) that have historically generated less moral outrage than a woman who wants to say “no”. The outré response to women’s choice seems far outside the moral sphere, and far, far into the pathological.