I spent some time this afternoon staring at a fingernail that has been slowly falling off. It's been maybe two weeks that I've been observing the inevitable. I'm not consumed with it, and I'm quite fine to let it go (literally) as I've come to accept the impermanence of IT. Of everything? No. Letting go of permanence is a struggle for our species. Why?
Why do we seek out permanence in a fluid universe, I ask the moon. Acceptance of the loss of a fingernail- is it acceptance of (my) ultimate impermanence? I mean, the nail will grow back. Do we grow back?
Waiting for an answer, I ponder: we don't mourn the loss (death?) of the (new) moon each calendar cycle because we know it comes back. It has a history of coming back. There is an understanding of permanence within impermanence. Death without tragedy.
The moon silently understanding; it has a permanence of cycles: waxing, waning, disappearing... My existential riddle remains unanswered tonight. Is the answer only to be found in the dissolution of consciousness and ego? Could it be this is 'true love', death? Love is in the soil...
What about a wave in the ocean, traveling incalculable distances only to crash on some distant shoreline? Does the wave die? I understand it to be fluid. Can there be a wave that never crashes?
The act of burying as an act of planting. Earth (literally, dirt) treats both acts the same. A sudden realization leads to a rare moment of clarity. I did not possess this clarity earlier this evening, as I watched the dirt fall over a small patch of disturbed earth. A seed. A corpse. It's all the same to the soil.
I'm not the same person that I was when I woke up this morning, I understand this. My dying nail? It's still holding onto a permanence I've already let go of. I want it to fall off into the soil. Tonight. Let it grow back into something wild.
Driving back from visiting some friends tonight, we took the cemitério road (rua da eternidade). I noticed that the same road at some point changed into rua da paz. It makes sense, I get it. Anyway, it made me smile.
No comments:
Post a Comment