Finding Meaning In Everything
This little poem wasn’t intended to have any particular feeling in it, but in retrospect it feels quite sad. I’ve always felt the appeal of the old solipsist philosophies which seem to justify the thought that there’s only me and everything else just pops in and out of existence according to my presence. I rather like the idea of the universe following me around like a shadow.
The calendar, notably, does not act in accordance with my wishes. I’m surprised to find that it’s nearly two months since Colin’s funeral. Today I’m going to his inquest. It’s just a formality since he died outside England and Wales – all the way up in Scotland. As there’s no suspicion of foul play there was no rush for it to happen but it does feel a little odd for it to be so late, and just before Christmas. I don’t really know what we’re going to learn from today – some confirmation of what we already know. Mainly, I think, a degree of finality. I like knowing the ends of stories, and I need detail to make anything real in my mind.
Lost In The Electrical Void
Retrospectively then this poem aligns weirdly with today – Colin and I are already separated by nearly three months – those regular opportunities for shared experience, the darkly shaded area of our familial Venn diagram slowly drift further apart. That’s already a quarter of a year’s worth of time. I don’t have any belief in the afterlife, and its strange to consider someone’s absorption of the world stopping while mine continues. All that’s left of him are those memories left in our minds and the physical ephemera of a life left in his house.
I don’t believe that we will meet again, other than in the trivial notion of our atoms once more rejoining the frothing flood of the material world. Eventually we’ll continue to exist only in the minds of those who knew us both. Occasionally we’ll be merged in a shared remembrance; neural shades of ourselves having a drink in someone else’s head.
That’s not bad, it’s more than we frail creatures can hope for. It’s already amazing that in the constant storm of atomic particles flowing through our bodies into the environment and back again, that this whirlwind of forces can ever lend us the appearance of body and the transient beauty of the mind. It’s neither surprising nor alarming that we will be blown back into the void from which we sprang. It’s just a shame we don’t always hold our forms for longer.
