That pitiable carcass on the side of the road--broken limbs, gasping, the blood in its mouth bubbling from aspiration--was, just a few moments ago, the intrepid animal confidently trotting across this melting asphalt stream. He was on an adventure, and he was alive with scents and sounds of mid-summer. Now he is bleeding, seeding the night with those distinctly eerie cries that indicate the proximity of death. Does this beast recall the brave certainty that moved him, inadvertently, into the path of his destruction? If he does reflect on his carefree ambling, does he regret his hubris? Does he idle as his heartbeat fades in the miserable memory of his earlier actions? Does he think himself cavalier? Does he blame himself?
The living cannot accurately surmise the complexity of thought and emotion that must crowd the dying person's mind. The textures of that experience (for as near as they are to us) are alien, unanswerable; they reveal a tactile landscape, blurred and out of reach. That said, the dead in us, the part that will die, nevertheless possesses an opinion on the subject that is worthy of expression. And I cannot imagine that the two states of mind--that of happy-go-lucky animal emerging from the thicket and that of gasping cadaver weeping on the shoulder--necessitate any kind of a straight line. Apart from being fired by the same synapses, in actuality, the mind of he who will cross the road and he who does not make it to the other side, are discrete entities. In the rush to make connections, we make mistakes, we lie. Anticipation, that unnerving insistence of writing the story to its end, threads the needle between present mentality and the past with all of its tremulous "truths." But we each forget everything when the angel comes.
The living cannot accurately surmise the complexity of thought and emotion that must crowd the dying person's mind. The textures of that experience (for as near as they are to us) are alien, unanswerable; they reveal a tactile landscape, blurred and out of reach. That said, the dead in us, the part that will die, nevertheless possesses an opinion on the subject that is worthy of expression. And I cannot imagine that the two states of mind--that of happy-go-lucky animal emerging from the thicket and that of gasping cadaver weeping on the shoulder--necessitate any kind of a straight line. Apart from being fired by the same synapses, in actuality, the mind of he who will cross the road and he who does not make it to the other side, are discrete entities. In the rush to make connections, we make mistakes, we lie. Anticipation, that unnerving insistence of writing the story to its end, threads the needle between present mentality and the past with all of its tremulous "truths." But we each forget everything when the angel comes.
