Stare at death. See who blinks first. (Hint: You will. Death cheats by having no eyelids.)
I do not partake of psychedelics, yet I’ve been in a ‘whoa dude’ state of mind lately. The thing about me, though, is that I never go full bliss. My spirit may wish to dwell within the Garden of Eden, but my mind always spots something rotting on the forest floor.
A foul odor riding on the sweet breeze leads me to the wiggling of a maggot under a leaf that points nearby to a pile of sunken fur. But if I look closer, as I always do, I face the perplexing, horrifying fact that even the dead are teeming with life. Just not their life. But where does our life end and the lives of scavengers begin? We’re already host to myriad corpses rushing through our veins.
For example, consider the hapless invading bacteria, swarmed by our white blood cells and torn apart inside our bodies. Or contemplate the multitude of blood, bone, and brain cells of our own, having done their duty faithfully, and are now dead, being propelled through our veins like the body of a drowned kayaker, carried over the rapids, until our bodies can expel them. My friends, death is not coming, it is already here. We are death, animated
I spoke with a friend who is passionate about composting. She shared with me how her perspective changed on the very notion of rot. Decay is essential to the breaking down of vegetable matter to make the soil from which new life can grow. The repugnant smells are signs of life doing its work in the filth—the same muck from which our furthest ancestors sprang to life.
We spoke about rot and decay over delicious gelato in a brightly lit, utterly sterile, shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The clean interior is a minimalist monument to modern design. Perhaps our love for lifeless interiors like this stems from our repulsion for all life beyond that which we cultivate and curate in gardens and pets.
Life, for us, has become a bonsai tree on hand-misted moss. Anything else is an enemy. The wild, crawling creatures remind us that rot is our constant companion, and we find that reality intolerable.
Jillian Hess, author of the wonderful Noted substack, examines the journals of artists and writers and makes exquisite observations about them. I’d love to ask her if, in years past, people made more mention of rot and decay. Did our ancestors understand rot as more a companion than an invisible specter? And if so, did that awareness open them up to a more comfortable ride on planet Earth? Or were they in a state of constant squirming? Was decay an enemy that signaled the arrival of our transition from living flesh to compost?
I must confess that I find rot and decay terrifying. I don’t want the people I love to die. My annual physical carries a foreboding. I know how resilient, yet how fragile, these churning systems within systems that make up our bodies are. Is the overwhelming love I feel for people an enduring force, or will it, too, simply begin a process of decay one day, and vanish, not even leaving the loam from which something else can grow?
We are all held, my friends, in an embrace we do not understand. Yet I refuse to believe that it is indifferent to us. We are swaddled in rot, but also in life, together.
Questions like these eat at the boundaries of my sanity like ants devouring a lump of worm on a hot sidewalk. But what if they didn’t? What if I could accept, or even celebrate the horror of my finitude, and the finitude of all that I love?
My mind drifts back to the encroaching rot within and without. My companions in meetings sniffle and I picture the mucous we all struggle to contain. The perfumes, colognes, and deodorants we apply to mask the reality of our bodies, the pressed shirts, and shined shoes are all totems to guard against the intrusive awareness of our meaty composition that is moments away from rot.
I contemplate the rot: The rot that sustains me. The rot that will claim me. I wish to befriend it. I want to call to the corpses inside of me and cradle them. As I wish for the universe to cradle me, and cradle you. We are all held, my friends, in an embrace we do not understand. Yet I refuse to believe that it is indifferent to us. We are swaddled in rot, but also in life, together.
Look, but do not stare, at the rot all around you, just for a moment. Forgive yourself if you feel fear or despair, but feel it nonetheless. Replace the repugnance with love, if you can, just for a moment. See if that softens your steps and deepens the reaches of your awareness.
Sean Sakamoto writes Free Life Coach for Thought Launcher.
"My friends, death is not coming, it is already here. We are death, animated" that sir is a deeply insightful and not-at-all morbid observation. It's going up on my wall!
"I contemplate the rot: The rot that sustains me. The rot that will claim me."