the dead

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When someone you know well dies, it matters to you immensely.
You feel the loss. You appreciate the life lost. You “appreciate” the death as death. It may be life changing.

We know, abstractly, that those near to others dying are at least equally affected by those deaths. But those deaths don’t usually affect us,
except when the numbers for a deathly event get large. We don’t appre-ciate those deaths. We can’t suffer every death. But the suffering daily is incalculable. It’s an abstract fact. We may be sobered. We may be pensive. But we do not appreciate the suffering of any given day.

Daily, we live a whispy phenomenality of awareness and attention, focused on what’s controllable. Our lives are relatively self interested
and self esteeming, even in a rewarding or praisworthy devotion to others. We are fulfilled, but know little of what the global day is about. The newspaper carries a relatively few high points in an accepted topography of importances that define the public sphere.

A new day awakens another suicide bomber. What else is new?

[ Jan. 12, 2018: This was a defense against being shattered by learning that my best friend, Janna, killed herself the day before, the same day that I, unwittingly, uploaded a celebration of wholly flourishing. I wrote
about her death—“this is your life”— six seasons later.]

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