Tag: death

Experience

On By Jacob A PauwelsIn Poetry2 Comments

A hundred thousand lifetimes have come before, yet we get no better at living.
Each of us has to figure it out for ourselves.

We have no way to pass on the information but crude language, either scrawled with a hand on paper, or pushed from the lungs and shaped by the tongue, teeth, and lips. Ham-fisted, barbaric, we try to draw out the internal and catapult it to others, only to have it look nothing like it did inside now that it has seen the light of day.

We can pass on procedure and meter and rhyme. We can pass on ideas, though less effectively so. Down through the ages we build on broken brick, on the splintered timber of the houses of thought that were erected in the minds of our ancestors.

But experience is something we must each earn for ourselves, and it is not a kind teacher. It does not hold the hand and guide the stance. It slaps the face and burns the field.

Then, the day we perish is the day we have gained as much experience as possible. The minute before death, we are as experienced as we will ever be, save for knowing the experience of death itself, which is impossible to relate.

If only one could live forever, constantly accumulating experience; knowing all that could be known and able to endlessly cross-reference the ocean with the sky.

Permanent Objects

On By Jacob A PauwelsIn PoetryLeave a comment

We spend eight hours a night, on average, practicing for death.
Letting go of the consciousness we fight so hard for in the end.
We slip into the unknown, night after night, with no promise of waking.
Am I not the only one who thinks that should be terrifying?

Have we developed such overwhelming object permanence that we believe not only that everything will still be there when we open our eyes in the morning,
but that we are, ourselves, permanent objects?

We wear the evidence of our impermanence on our faces, first in laugh lines and freckles, then in wrinkles and liver spots. We slowly gain experience and wisdom and lose days…

But I digress, of course the typical mind would not dwell on these questions,
lest it be robbed of the very desire to continue chasing continuity.
We crave infinity. We cannot grasp immortality, but we all run towards it.
Some have resolved themselves to the reality that it is not truly attainable,
but most are still quietly dowsing, at least internally, for the fountain of youth.

That practice of divination points us instead towards other more immediate pleasures, and as the drink and the lust make us forget, they draw us nearer still to that which we are running from.

So what are we to conclude? I am no sage or guru, but I will tell you this:

I think an awareness of the end is important for the journey. Knowing something is temporary allows us to pay attention while it is present.

So keep a hand on the wheel, watch the stars at night, gauge the wind, and keep the figurehead pointed toward the mark, lest you wind up adrift and find you are no longer practicing.