It's hard to admit that sometimes you can't answer that question. When I was in Japan, and I woke up with bed-bug bites, and cockroaches taking over the room, it was easily attributed to the superior intelligence of Japanese cockroaches vs their American counterparts (see also: japanese math scores).
But, no more than 24 hours of being back in the U.S., I received word of one of my close cousins: "He died this morning." Jarrad? What do you mean, Jarrad? Not Jarrad? I don't know any other Jarrads. . . really? . . . Why?
At 18 years old, he lost control of his motorcycle, and hurt himself very badly as a result of the fall; he died almost immediately. To Lauren, Evan, Lennon, Sawyer, and Akasha, I hope this reflection is not inappropriate.
At 22, I have only experienced two other funerals, and the second one, I couldn't gather the strength to attend. I was much younger then. Some would argue that I'm not terribly old as of now, but, I think some in my position like to think the last few years have really changed them; moving away from home, going to college, making serious relationships, graduating, learning, traveling. . . these things hold certain weight in what I would call Life Experience.
It was terrible to see how quickly that all meant absolutely nothing.
This was the first time I had been with a corpse, to put it crudely, though not negatively. At my family's God Parent's home, we all received Jarrad, washed, and not embalmed; whole, in a certain sense. Like in an older time, this was a very physical process. He was brought into the living room, where the family dressed him with oils, and clothed him. As one can imagine, this is not a quick process.
At least in my field of education, we were often taught to look beyond 'permanent sites of authority,' the 'true essence' of a thing, the 'real meaning,' and so on. This teaching was generally a caution against oversimplification, of missing the complexity in the world; a joyful complexity, as he would call it.
But it is difficult to look to those other heterogeneous, indeterminate, shifting zones of complexity or joy, when you have the unchanged body (and not the"inanimate" body Cavell often refers to) lifeless and unmoving. This type of body was not easy to accept; no matter the words, the voices, the thoughts, the touch, he was no longer of this world. I was not the only one who went on to conjure up Mark Twain; the image of Huck Finn, waiting in the rafters listening to his own wake, and waiting for somebody to fall out from the A/C ducts; or at the very least, for him to open his eyes and yell surprise, in Jarrad fashion.
It was when I helped bring his casket into the house, that I lost it. I had always hated the entire process, the embalming, the open casket, the procession. But this was different, the casket was beautiful; many of his best friends built a casket, and put art onto it (and into it), and poetry, and so many other things, that this typical sign was re-built, expanded, and multiplied. It had been imbued with many lives in the most unlikely of places, which was so tragic in its own right.
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My thoughts are not quite over, though I think I will need to finish this another time.
But, no more than 24 hours of being back in the U.S., I received word of one of my close cousins: "He died this morning." Jarrad? What do you mean, Jarrad? Not Jarrad? I don't know any other Jarrads. . . really? . . . Why?
At 18 years old, he lost control of his motorcycle, and hurt himself very badly as a result of the fall; he died almost immediately. To Lauren, Evan, Lennon, Sawyer, and Akasha, I hope this reflection is not inappropriate.
At 22, I have only experienced two other funerals, and the second one, I couldn't gather the strength to attend. I was much younger then. Some would argue that I'm not terribly old as of now, but, I think some in my position like to think the last few years have really changed them; moving away from home, going to college, making serious relationships, graduating, learning, traveling. . . these things hold certain weight in what I would call Life Experience.
It was terrible to see how quickly that all meant absolutely nothing.
This was the first time I had been with a corpse, to put it crudely, though not negatively. At my family's God Parent's home, we all received Jarrad, washed, and not embalmed; whole, in a certain sense. Like in an older time, this was a very physical process. He was brought into the living room, where the family dressed him with oils, and clothed him. As one can imagine, this is not a quick process.
At least in my field of education, we were often taught to look beyond 'permanent sites of authority,' the 'true essence' of a thing, the 'real meaning,' and so on. This teaching was generally a caution against oversimplification, of missing the complexity in the world; a joyful complexity, as he would call it.
But it is difficult to look to those other heterogeneous, indeterminate, shifting zones of complexity or joy, when you have the unchanged body (and not the"inanimate" body Cavell often refers to) lifeless and unmoving. This type of body was not easy to accept; no matter the words, the voices, the thoughts, the touch, he was no longer of this world. I was not the only one who went on to conjure up Mark Twain; the image of Huck Finn, waiting in the rafters listening to his own wake, and waiting for somebody to fall out from the A/C ducts; or at the very least, for him to open his eyes and yell surprise, in Jarrad fashion.
It was when I helped bring his casket into the house, that I lost it. I had always hated the entire process, the embalming, the open casket, the procession. But this was different, the casket was beautiful; many of his best friends built a casket, and put art onto it (and into it), and poetry, and so many other things, that this typical sign was re-built, expanded, and multiplied. It had been imbued with many lives in the most unlikely of places, which was so tragic in its own right.
------
My thoughts are not quite over, though I think I will need to finish this another time.
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