Dispatch from the Caribbean
Thoughts about death on the way to paradise
The following was written on a flight from New York City to Cancun as part of a trip to Tulum, sometime in October, 2020. Thanks to frequent travel as part of my work at The Wall Street Journal the year before and a generous extension of Delta’s SkyMiles program due to the pandemic, I was upgraded to first class where I spent the flight slowly getting drunk on complementary Pinot Grigio and writing about death.
What? How do you spend your vacations?
Death is the result of all biological functions of a living organism stopping forever. That means, death is relative. A permanent condition that, in order for it to happen, prays on the living.
“Death is the common right of toads and men,” says Emily Dickinson. Since stones, unlike toads and men, never live, they cannot die.
Those lucky bastards will outlast us all.
Life and death, as existential concepts are, interdependent — yin/yang, etc. — which, is fascinating, because it’s, then, not so much a matter of being vs not-being. Stones are, there is no doubt about this. Therefore, they be; but, are they be-ings? No. We, humans, are beings. We get that special title, in my opinion, because we know we are and, in doing so, inherit being-ness. Wasn’t there something about thinking and am-ing that lynchpin-ed all this?
Language fails here, obvs, because a stone, once pulverized, used-to-be, while we, on the other hand, will someday be, “used-to-be,” alive. So, what, dear gods of English, is “used-to-being-ness”?
For, what and were inspire unproductive deliberation. We need new words.
I’m a content writer and blogger in Brooklyn. I write about death and the afterlife. If you’re interested in talking about these things, or anything else, follow me here, or on Twitter. I follow-back and love DMs, so hit me up.
