My wife said she needs time alone. Not in the dramatic, I’m fed up with you and we’re probably going to break up kind of way. More like, I love you but people need time alone to unwind sometimes and that’s normal and totally chill.
So I drove up to this tiny cabin in the woods. It’s a simple life here. Just the essentials. There’s a dry toilet but it’s better to pee outside to reduce the smell. Hadn’t done that in a while. Have you been out in the city and you needed to pee real bad but all the toilets were on lockdown because of the pandemic? Forests have the solution.
Anyway, I like quiet, simple places. I find they can tease out a lot of clarity in oneself. My top insight so far: death is everywhere here, if you know to look.
It started with dead animals on the side of the road. Crossed at the wrong time. They don’t understand we’re racing all over the place. I’m sorry friends, we don’t understand why either. Sometimes they look peaceful, and weirdly human, like they’re sleeping on their side. Other times their bodies in shambles. A crow pecking on the remains of a squirrel. Can they eat that?
Walking in the forest I see so many insects. Ants on the ground. Unnamed things jumping about. Chirping. Insects eating insects endlessly. I must be killing some with every step. I try not to, so I look down a lot. It’s spring but there are dead leaves everywhere. Dead wood too, like dead limbs. No coroner comes to remove them. They don’t mind.
It’s not just death, there’s life everywhere too. Bees buzzing about. A lizard scurrying away. Mysterious noises in the distance. It’s overwhelming. I don’t think I’ve ever felt less alone. Death feeds new life. Or life feeds on death. Or, if I unstrain my eyes a second, the line disappears.
I walk by two large compost bins, as tall as I am. What are they? Dead? Alive? Both? Neither? The dead leaves are still the old trees, and the soil, and the new trees that grow from it. The insects are just dancing.
I’m here, in the subjective middle of it all, clutching my own life so, so tight. Like an anxious boy at the edge of the ballroom. I’m afraid to dance, because I’m so afraid to die. Like the deer in this forest, with their antenna-like ears, always on the lookout. Never quite at ease.
Like fuel.
Like the heart of stars,
where one atom is forged into another.
The things of this world
consume each other to extinction.
You ask why?
Why do explosions work that way?
Friend, it’s the law here.
