28.11.03
When I was very young, I asked my mother who Jesus was. Terrified of condemning her two year old daughter to a life of religious terror, she hedged her bets and said:
"Well, some people believe that when you die, your body dies, but the rest of you goes somewhere else."
I accepted the answer, and we went on with our lives. Several years later, when the topic again came up in conversation, she realised that what I had understood was:
"Well, some people believe that when you die, your body dies, but your head goes somewhere else."
Thus, I spent my formative years under the distinct impression that when I died, my head would go to some great room in the sky.
Apparently, it did not distress me.
*
My friend, raised in the fifties and sent to a Catholic Girls' School, lived in fear of Purgatory.
Decades later, the Pope announced it didn't exist.
Never mind the infidelities, deaths, rifts, comas and disabilities that have plagued her since; the great injustice of her life was a childhood spent in fear of something that didn't exist; of something that was so easily discarded.
*
I have been to an exhibition of the dead.
The curiosity was desperate, but not cruel. It was quiet, but not silent. At times, people laughed, and said things like, "I like the way he's wearing his face as a hat," and it was okay.
I have seen nothing so extraordinary as the human blood system, down to the tiniest capiliary, still in human shape, but without the human. The reactions of the people who saw it with me came close.
*
It is not all right, these days, to be curious about something dead. Every one of us will die. Still, the subject, and its products, are taboo.
Where we go after we die: we have fought wars over it.
Taking away all evidence that is religious, we are left with nothing. We are a series of chemical reactions, with nowhere else to go.
Yet, there are more chemical connections in our brains than there have been seconds since the dinosaurs lived. This is, undeniably, extraordinary and special.
"Well, some people believe that when you die, your body dies, but the rest of you goes somewhere else."
I accepted the answer, and we went on with our lives. Several years later, when the topic again came up in conversation, she realised that what I had understood was:
"Well, some people believe that when you die, your body dies, but your head goes somewhere else."
Thus, I spent my formative years under the distinct impression that when I died, my head would go to some great room in the sky.
Apparently, it did not distress me.
*
My friend, raised in the fifties and sent to a Catholic Girls' School, lived in fear of Purgatory.
Decades later, the Pope announced it didn't exist.
Never mind the infidelities, deaths, rifts, comas and disabilities that have plagued her since; the great injustice of her life was a childhood spent in fear of something that didn't exist; of something that was so easily discarded.
*
I have been to an exhibition of the dead.
The curiosity was desperate, but not cruel. It was quiet, but not silent. At times, people laughed, and said things like, "I like the way he's wearing his face as a hat," and it was okay.
I have seen nothing so extraordinary as the human blood system, down to the tiniest capiliary, still in human shape, but without the human. The reactions of the people who saw it with me came close.
*
It is not all right, these days, to be curious about something dead. Every one of us will die. Still, the subject, and its products, are taboo.
Where we go after we die: we have fought wars over it.
Taking away all evidence that is religious, we are left with nothing. We are a series of chemical reactions, with nowhere else to go.
Yet, there are more chemical connections in our brains than there have been seconds since the dinosaurs lived. This is, undeniably, extraordinary and special.
