The room's stone walls are nearly
three feet thick, so windows and doors are inset amongst their own dark
shadows. The ten-ft-high, dark brown doors are of heavy, rough wood, and
opening them occasions scraping and screeching appropriate for a medieval
dungeon. The sunlight pouring through, though, undoes all heaviness and gloom,
and the floor tiles shine like a cheerful song. On the patio floor just outside
a sunning green snake slips into the shadows of a thicket of bamboo palms. A
yellow, black and white Great Kiskadee shrieks from a banana tree with glossy,
green leaves.
Drinking in all these sensations it
seems to me that I could hardly live without them. Yet most people would say
that they could hardly live without central heating and cooling, soft beds,
sealed windows and plush carpets, even though the main effect of these items is
to cushion, muffle, tone down, make tepid, sanitize and generally drain from
our lives the sensations that right now I cherish and need.
In fact, in my opinion, one reason
so many people are neurotic or basically unhappy is that they live sensory
deprived lives. Maybe obsessions with immoderate booze, drugs and sex are
unhealthy attempts to reclaim the sensations our ancestors felt with the
changing seasons, dawn and dusk, and simple living.
In modern, consumption-focused
society, I think that when it gets cold there are more reasons than for
sustainability to put on a sweater instead of turning up the thermostat. There
are more reasons for long walks and weekends at the park than exercise and
cheap fun. And there are more reasons to fill one's head with flower anatomy and
bird fieldmarks than merely to identify what is at hand.
*****
COMFORTING VISIONS OF VULTURES &
MAGGOTS
A friend and I have been exchanging
notions on what we want done with our bodies when we die. She's all for
cremation, because she likes the idea of recycling her body's nutrients into
her garden.
I regard cremation as acceptable,
but not preferable. My problem with cremation is that the petrochemical-powered
burning process doesn't benefit a rainbow of natural decomposers. I prefer for
critters and microorganisms to benefit as they convert my fat to simple
compounds of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, my protein to simple nitrogenous
compounds, and the calcium phosphate of my bones to ions of calcium and
phosphate in solution.
My preferred first step for this
process is for my body upon death to be devoured by vultures, chambered by
maggots, and to have my bones gnawed on by any animal disposed to gnaw them.