death: Emily Dickinson

I went to Dumaguete for a four-day writing training and, not to be dramatic or anything, but it had arguably been the best four days of my life. I had basically just been working nonstop months prior that it was borderline epiphanic to have four days of just doing what I want to do for once in my life.

So you'll find me walking across the Boulevard, a long stretch of concrete by the sea which directly branches out from the Dumaguete port. Bags in hand - I brought two: my Lotor bag (aka a Hawk bag with a Lotor color scheme), and a duffel. And neither had space for anything more. Both had been completely full and ready to go home, and I carried them across the concrete to the gates of the port - around 10PM; we were to catch the 11PM ferry.

We had been drinking minutes prior, sort of as a last hurrah, so I guess my brain cells were pretty slow to process what had been going on.

It was a flash of panic, and I slowed in my tracks. The breeze hit me sharp across the face, and I looked around to see this town I knew I'd learn to hate somehow if I stayed long enough, this town that brought me in the presence of people I may never forget, this town which showed me a 4-day glimpse of a life I wish I had - the town which allowed me to write, and just write.

I was immensely (drunk) moved. Showered in some kind of adrenaline rush that made me want to leave with something. Anything that was from here to remember it by. I'm not huge on souvenirs, I'm not really the traveller type. And I don't take a bunch of photos because I always thought that every moment's most genuine if you're not always trying to remember it. But I sat down in front of a mat of handmade accessories laid out on the Boulevard, and while I knew my bags were full, I bought two (I was gonna buy three or four but it felt embarrassingly cheesy), and I put them on and never really quite took them off since.

I remember the experience because when I woke up impressively not hungover when the ferry neared Cebu, I kept thinking: "Is that what death feels like?"

I feel like no matter how we say we accept death or want to die and everything, our biological imperative will always be first and foremost survival. And so we will always struggle, maybe not to similar degrees, but I think the moment before we die, we really would try and struggle, and take things with us to remember this world by, no matter how much of a shitfest this all could be.

It's kind of optimistic, it means that no matter how you hate this world and yourself right now, in the end you'll always end up wanting to hold on to it. But the thought is also kind of scary. I've spent a lot of time thinking about death - not in a morbid way - but there was this time in, I think, 6th grade when I asked myself: what would I possibly be thinking on my death bed, and the question's never really left my mind since.

It's easy to get scared of death, but in a paper on "The Death Poetry of Emily Dickinson", William Cooney (1998) writes that "life itself cannot be understood fully except from the vantage point of the grave".

So while it's scary to think about the end, it might be necessary to do so nevertheless. Poets like Emily Dickinson make this necessary unpleasantry a bit more bearable by making this abstract unknown which was death into something we can see, hear, and talk to.

Emily Dickinson wrote thousands of poems and about a quarter of them were about death (arguably the best ones). That's like... two hundred fifty poems about death... Emily was maybe a little cray cray. (For most of her life, she locked herself in her room and refused to meet people and went outside almost always in a white dress that made her pale complexion even paler.)

So this (white) lady has described death and dying in so many different ways. She had described it as calm, as quick, as painful, as beautiful - she, like me, was in constant thought about what the last breath would feel like.

She ultimately died of Bright's disease herself and I wonder which of her multiple death poems that felt like.

I really don't know anything about poetry and I can't tell good from bad if I'm being honest. But I like Emily Dickinson because she's given me all these possibilities to prepare myself for. She's given me time to think about how I'd react in these possible scenarios before actually participating in them. And with the knowledge of these possibilities I'm able to live my life the way I'd never regret it on my deathbed.

That's all everyone really wants anyway. To be dying, but not wanting to, because your life - your shitty fucked up life - was beautiful. And you don't wanna go after all.

I'm struggling daily to see how beautiful my life is so that when I'm dying I won't feel like I've taken it for granted.



Til next Sunday,

Des