domenica 17 aprile 2011

MY QUEST:

An -after-50th-Birthday-party (not mine) musing, in English


after a lovely party last night, where food and wine, friendship and ideas mingled in an almost perfect combination,  I notice with renewed clarity, that the philosophical inquiry on whether ash -the remains of a fire- is essence or refuse, will be a leading theme of my life, my own personal quest.

Washing up this am in lack of hot water for a shower, I witness my body's aging, its flesh just starting to sag, its forms changed already, slightly molded by the inexorable drag of earth's gravity. And I foresee more change ahead, I imagine times when it will be truly old and getting unthinkably older, decaying in unmeasurable ways.

And I ask myself: is this not still my body? This vessel containing my own being, this vehicle of my own life. Is it not what makes it all possible? And though I have often been less devoted to it than to my mind and its whorls, now that this carapace is going its own way, its future vanishing calls for my attention with a new urgency.

And I wonder anew how my flesh and blood is still essence, even in its imperfect state, and if it will be essence until the last drop of life ebbs away... or if it is -or if it will ever become- refuse, the discarded cocoon of a moth, finally flying to its next existence or to eternal night.