Thursday 5 May 2005

Pic of the day: "When you grow older, days go by so quickly." Is that an expression of happiness, sadness or just sleepiness? (Screenshot from the anime Sensei no Ojikan, also known as "Doki Doki School Hours".)

Last times

in the supermarket, I walk along the aisles and look at the familiar and unfamiliar food. (There's lots I have never ever tried.) And I realize that I'll probably never eat dinner again. Even before the recent month of unexpected liquid diet, dinners were small and far between. Now that I try to avoid fat and fried food, there are even fewer reasons to have dinner. Unless you count soup, a cup of noodles or a cup of rice. It is hard to imagine me exerting myself to make a dinner when all I can safely eat is two cups of food, perhaps two and a half if it is "light" enough.

I did not realize when I had my (probably) last dinner. But that is nothing new. I did not know the last time that I sang together with others, the last time I danced, my last kiss (25 years ago this year, if memory serves ... perhaps it doesn't, I certainly did not expect an anniversary of any kind). Will I know when I eat my last bread and drink my last wine? Probably not.

My mind is torn about this. A part of me accepts it. I knew when I was on the top of my life. The view was so breathtaking, all those years uphill finally rewarded. But I also knew that it was downhill from there, and probably steep in places. Still, this is my path. To spin off more and more, to grow smaller and smaller until there is nothing left. Because, in the end there is nothing left for us all. This is the one certain thing, that all that has form is subject to decay.

***

And yet I am not depressed in the sense that I want to die or even am unconcerned about it. Whenever I suddenly fall ill, I'm like "Please God don't let me die! I want to live, please please! As long as possible, preferably forever!" That's not your average depression speaking, I think. But the sad truth is that, barring divine intervention of an unusual scale, there will be a time when I shall no longer live, as it comes to us all. Whether this be sooner or later, I do not know, although I would prefer much later.

It is so hard to accept that there will be a last time for everything. I guess that's why some of us cling so hard to the hope of eternal life, while others cling to crazy science that promises nanobots to repair our cells or uploading our mind to a supercomputer. I guess that's why some people let themselves deep-freeze in liquid nitrogen, waiting for another kind of resurrection. Yes, I consider these things pseudo- religions. And I suppose they don't think much of the scientific value of 2000 year old eyewitness accounts of flat out impossible events, carefully selected by one side only. Perhaps I would have let it slide as well, if I really did not care about living forever. But I do care, even if my brain insists that it is impossible. Yeah, it's the head and the heart again.

But the resurrection, whatever sort, is on the other side of that dark ocean where no one can see the other shore from here. And before that, there may be many more last times. May they all be as good as those that are behind me.