Every living creature in this world dies alone. Repeat
X times. I thought: ‘All creatures die alone.’ Who
cares? Well, ‘every’ surely is something different
from ‘all’. Every creature, that’s them, one for one.
‘All’ means: who cares who they are. And they live,
apparently, every living creature lives in itself, they
are living creatures that die, which is worse than all
creatures, dead or alive. In this world – we can skip
that, in my opinion, because outside of this world
we don’t know a thing. This world, our world, the
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world of Our Father, but without him. Alright just
leave it, so we don’t need to argue about aliens, or the
dead, or zombies, or gods. It would only impair the
discussion.
Whether it’s true I don’t know of course. What do
we know about all creatures, every creature in this
world? Sometimes I imagine that scientists will
discover that plants have feelings, or to be more
precise: feel pain. Some animals can feel pain, we
know that much: mammals, and other species with
complex nervous systems. Who cares. But what if
all living creatures (the dandelions and the apple
trees and the blades of grass and broccoli, potatoes,
and so on and so on), if all that lives can feel pain, in
other words, is in pain? Add up the numbers. Can
humanity, can every living creature in this world
live, knowing all the pain they inflict on the trees
and the plants, on vegetables and flowers? It would
increase the amount of pain in the world with the
power of a billion-billion-trillion. Wouldn’t we
collectively impeach ourselves and just call it a day?
Or would we think: we all die alone anyway. My
zombie called: ‘When I died, there was no one around
to see it. I died all alone. It’s fine.’
3 hrs
I lie in bed, a magnet: the sun pushes me down and
up in one go. Or is it dark already and is gravity
breathing? The mattress vibrates beneath my body;
the vibration lifts me up. But the air above me is
heavy and doesn’t want me. It’s gravity alright, too
light and too heavy at the same time. The same goes
for my eyelids. You need to keep the lid on, don’t
squeeze, but ease. There’s a pulley on my eyelid, it
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starts to move on the vibrations of gravitational
forces. Beneath me, glistening listicles.
Now it’s the ears that vibrate, but because I want
them to. I want to hear. Footsteps in the hallway, one
after the other, one in front of the other, step, step,
don’t stop, it’s kitty cat. As long as I’m not dreaming it
will be the cat and not a zombie. A living cat vibrated
into being by my ears; it walks across the hallway,
paw by paw, I hear how she pushes the door open
with her head, winds around it into the room, stops,
braces herself. Then the hearing stops and I start
feeling. Paws on my body, she pushes me down, into
the mattress. Steps of paws. The magnet turns and
sucks itself onto me. The weight of a living creature,
or I don’t know, she’s dead, the kitty cat. She died
alone, but as long as you’re not a zombie, you’re alive.
text from Miriam Rasch from Shadowbook
image source https://images.pexels.com/photos/9786/pexels-photo.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&dpr=1&w=500
