death is
odd. I noticed the other day that recently a disproportionate part of my hypomnemata has been dedicated towards beautiful pessimistic quotes on mortality, transience of being and our nothingness. but my preoccupation, it seems, is justified. the most confounding moments occupy that small space between living and dying. what happens, where does it go, what is it that goes? "soul" is the name we assign to this incomprehensible departure, but the word itself divulges nothing. and I can't quite accept that everything has to do with chemicals.
just now, hours after I'd heard about my uncle, I stood in the middle of a country road miles away from city lights. out there the night is blacker, the stars more incandescent, more unaccountable. darkness crushed in on all sides, stretched out my own existence into paper thinness. what does it feel like to never doubt what you are, to never ask what this strangeness we call life is? at times like these, the irony is that, despite the working and the shopping and eating and sleeping and gossipping and making babies and houses and lives, doubt might be the only thing that can confirm us. what is our existence, if not some fleeting aberration in an unflinching ether? and how can we, knowing so, not jolt awake in bed some nights to a small shiver, the sort that might assail a rat in the dark, as the trap slams shut behind it? how can we do anything at all?