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EPITAPH

Eventually, when I have not eaten for awhile, my body signals hunger and I begin to think of food.  If I do not sleep, my mind grows duller and duller until, eventually, sleep becomes an inevitability.  Sexual fantasy is an ever-present element in the programming of my thoughts.  Daydreams of all sorts hold me for minutes at a time in their thrall.  Each hour there are a thousand – many thousand – urges, ideas, thoughts, dreams, and wishes coursing through my brain.  I appear to have little power over them:  they seem to well up inside me with a will and a purpose all their own.  The secret maneuverings of electrical impulses, hormonal influences, and chemical reactions – what else is there of me but these?  What aspect of that which is called "I" exists untouched by preconditioned reflex?  What, if anything, would I find were I able to crack open the shell of "me"?

I do not go often to the cemetery anymore.  I live too far away to make of it a convenient walk.  But, having plenty of time on my hands lately because of being out of work, I decided to go there today – in the midst of a storm of snow – just to see what I would see.  And what I saw were fields of white.  What I saw were bushes and trees all flung with white, the gravestones turned to soft, rounded humps.  My boots, buried ankle-deep and kicking up little heaps of snow with every step, hypnotized me.  Head bent, I could hear nothing but the keening of the wind and the sound of my own breath, could see nothing but flakes of frozen whiteness spiraling down towards my feet.  I grew dazed, and the world about me became as if a dream.

What happens when I think of any habit's end?  Anxiety grows in me.  What happens when all habits end?  Perfect, dreamless sleep?  Or is the living spirit of "me" set free?  These are the sorts of thoughts that passed through my mind today as I trudged the frozen expanse of the cemetery towards the ravine.  When I came at last to its familiar edge, the length of which I used so often to walk, I stopped awhile to peer through the blur of wind and snow into the wood beyond.  The air was quieter in there.  My eyes traveled down to the frozen creek, then up again along the gully's far bank.  This rose before me so pristine in its unsullied whiteness that I could almost imagine its never having been trespassed by mortal man.  It was, in this sense, like a paradise – and I considered broaching that icy Eden myself, wandering my way deep into the wood until there was nothing left but me and the trees and the silence of the snow . . .

But I waited too long.  The cold began to seep into my bones.  Shivering, I turned away and headed back once more towards home.

I miss my walks through the cemetery, miss the spring and summer and autumn evenings I used to spend there.  But today was, in its way, the most perfect day of all.  The thousands of dead who lay beneath my feet, almost all of whom were entirely unknown to me, had not even names and dates left to identify them:  the snow had obliterated all.  And yet, there they lay.  Those now dead had once had their own hopes and dreams, their loves and hates, their desires and needs.  Their human appetites had been various and potent.  Then there had come an end to all appetite . . .

As I left the cemetery, I thought:  What strange loneliness is this I feel?  We are each of us, the living as much as the dead, so very alone!  But, how is it that the thought of this could make me feel so frightened, and yet also – so free?

Loneliness:  Snow gathers on a pine bough