Death - "Faust Arp" by Radiohead

Wakey wakey rise and shine
It's on again off again on again
Watch me fall like dominoes
In pretty patterns
Fingers in the blackbird pie
I'm tingling tingling tingling
It's what you feel not what you ought to
What you ought to,
Reasonable and sensible
Dead from the neck up
I guess I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed
We thought you had it in you
But no, no, no
For no real reason

Squeeze the tubes and empty bottles
I'll take a bow, take a bow, take a bow
It's what you feel not what you ought to
What you ought to,
The elephant that's in the room
Is tumbling, tumbling, tumbling
And duplicate and triplicate and
Plastic bags and
Duplicate and triplicate
Dead from the neck up
I guess I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed
We thought you had it in you
But no, no, no
Exactly where do you get off?
Is enough
Is enough
I love you but enough is enough,
Enough of that stuff
There's no real reason
You've got a handful of feathers
You're gonna melt into butter

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Aesop's Fables - Death

(Click here for large version)

I think Aesop misses the mark here. The old laborer wouldn't necessarily be sorry if his wish had been gratified; he'd just be dead.

The real lesson of this fable seems to be about our inability to measure our own readiness as it pertains to crossing certain thresholds. At the critical moment, at the jump-or-don't-jump point, we never feel ready. Later on, whether we jumped or we didn't, we hardly remember being given a choice.

My friend Chris can attest to this; he went skydiving recently with his boyfriend, and there's a really good picture of him taken at the critical point, right at the door of the airplane. You can tell just by looking at him that he's not even really there -- his mind has been blown and he's as blank as a ping-pong ball. It's obvious that whatever happened next, whether he leaped into the sky or clawed his way back into the recesses of the plane, it would be done automatically, half-consciously at best.

Chris and I have laughed together at this bug-eyed picture on many occasions. I'd like it's the exact same expression that the old laborer had on his face when Death suddenly appeared in the form of a grisly skeleton:



But you know, ultimately Chris did jump. And so will you, too... when you are truly ready, or are given no other choice.

Previously On Arcanalogue: Death

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"Excuse Me... Do You Work Here?"

This is the second installment in a series of short essays inspired by the 22 Trump cards, featuring original artwork by Greg Erskine. (Scroll down for large version.)


The year following the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC was a confusing time for conservative sub-suburban zones like Mesa, Arizona. It had become obvious to everyone as a community that there were profound conversations about religion and politics to be had, but no one was really sure what the rules were for participating in them. And so for the entirety of that long twilit year, the locals warily settled on a safe discourse that included prayer, proper flag care, signs of the end times, and (for those who needed a project) the proper application of duct-tape and plastic sheets over windows.

My job in a large secondhand bookstore shielded me from the worst of it. Our store was like a cultural outpost appealing to those who subscribed to the subtler truths of literature and art, and in such a polarizing social climate its neutrality felt almost radical. The staunch right-wing and religious types were forced to mingle with hippies and college kids if they wanted to score bargains on their homeschooling texts and Harlequin romance novels. We even had a section devoted to Islam (though it remained mostly untouched, whereas the shelf across the aisle devoted to Nostradamus’ prophecies had to be re-stocked almost daily).

I'm sorry to say that even before the cloud of post-9/11 disillusionment settled around us, I was already kind of a miserable wreck. After skidding out of community college I’d spent several years trying to find a foothold in some other world, but had little to show for it. As my friends began graduating from college one by one, I felt increasingly marginal and hopeless. The months passed more or less pointlessly; I began to accept that I might not have anything to look forward to in life besides making sure all of Faye Kellerman’s novels were displayed in the proper order.

Unfortunately I wasn’t even very good at that. It was noted in my annual performance review from that year -- a document which I still have, and which I regard as something of a sacred artifact: “The sections Tom stocks show little, if any, care for alphabetization or organization of any kind.” I also seemed “unwilling if not entirely incapable of finding a task and remaining on it." This was most likely due to "a lack of focus and a veritable multitude of potential distractions.” Ouch. Of particular historical interest to me is this observation: “Customers requiring assistance are usually pointed to a section instead of physically taken to the section they are looking for.”

When you work in customer service, there are always moments when you don’t really see people anymore. When they talk, all you hear is their helplessness and ignorance, until they become completely swallowed up by the apparent stupidity of their own questions. I’d often resolve to "be more present" in my work, and for a short time I'd find myself happy to serve once more, but as the world around us got crazier, even this began to happen less often. Thus, on the day when an elderly, well-dressed gentleman approached me at the information desk and asked whether we had a Buddhism section, I began to offer my usual grunt-and-point response.

I caught myself. Perhaps it was his old age, perhaps it was his unusual (i.e. non-Jesus-related) request, but something compelled me to get personally involved in his search. In fact, I felt uncharacteristically happy to do so -- as I led the way through the winding stacks, I caught myself relishing an opportunity to find a shred of meaning in my work for once. Today I would help a very old man find a book that might contribute to his peace of mind at the end of his life; perhaps if I paid more attention to people’s needs, I thought, I would find ways to redeem my wretched self through good works, however small and thankless.

“Ta-daa!” I announced when I arrived at our modest Buddhism section. Unfortunately, in my eagerness to be of service, I’d walked ahead too quickly -- I was all alone in the Far East. I swore at myself. Why not make the poor old guy run the mile while I’m at it? Backtracking, I found my gentleman coming around the corner at his own pace, just beyond the Scientology stacks. “Sorry about that,” I grinned. “I didn’t mean to lose you!” He didn’t smile back. He was looking up over my head with an inarticulable expression, and just as I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, he tumbled backward violently. His legs flew out from under him. One of his shoes sailed past me, bouncing off of a shelf loaded with unwanted copies of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics. In the blink of an eye, the man I’d elected to help was now lying dead at my feet.

Looking up, I saw that everyone around us was frozen in place, staring. I shouted at the nearby shoppers to call 911, but nobody even flinched. I sprinted to the checkout and got a cashier to make the call, and then hurried back to the old man’s side. A few of the statues had melted in my absence, so we began CPR. One customer breathed into him, another pumped away at his chest. I supported the back of his neck to hold the airway open, but I also held his hand tightly. I had a funny feeling that I couldn't explain: I knew somehow that he would not be revived, that this was the last of him. And more than anything I wanted him to know that someone was there with him at the end -- someone who recognized what was happening and who was committed to witnessing his death instead of squeezing him back to life. There were no friends or loved ones by his side, but perhaps if I squeezed his hand and reached out to him with all my heart, he wouldn’t be entirely alone.

When the paramedics arrived, I retreated and sat on the floor by the man’s feet and watched as they used tiny scissors to snip a ragged incision through his shirt and sweater, exposing the seashell-pale chest for defibrillation. Funny, I thought. When we’re getting dressed in the morning, we never imagine those clothes being cut off of us. As the paramedics did their work, I found myself holding the foot that had thrown its shoe; I kneaded it reassuringly as they prepared the electricity, and apologetically after it had leapt into him. By now, however, it was obvious to everyone that this had been no mere close call. Within a few minutes he was covered and taken away, nothing left behind but a few shreds of brown acrylic sweater. The ID in his wallet said his name was Jack. He had been eighty-two years old.

As the small crowd of gawkers dissipated, I got up on unsteady legs and retreated to the relative privacy of the Buddhism section. Somewhere there must be a parallel reality in which Jack and I still stood here together, scanning the titles in search of something specific. Which one would he have chosen? My numb hands selected a book at random. It was The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche. I opened to the middle, where my eyes landed on a passage explaining how experiences with death often triggered powerful karmic transformations among the living. It was too much. Leaning my forehead against the shelf, I could feel my brain beginning to liquefy.

I was startled by a voice at my shoulder. “Eh…Excuse me?” a woman was saying gently. “Do you work here?” I paused a moment before turning around, bracing myself for whatever might possibly happen next. She looked harmless enough -- was she with the police? Was she a family member? Had I done something wrong? I considered her question carefully, and then replied thickly, “Yes, I work here.” I was ready for anything, I decided.

“Oh, good!” she said. “Do you have any books about dogs?”

Why yes. Yes we do. Right this way.

I’ve always had a hard time deciding which parts of this story to tell. Try as I might, I can never seem to communicate what was actually important about it -- the details are simultaneously too tabloid and too personal, they fire the imagination in the wrong ways, they elicit confused and confusing responses. The profound shift in awareness that resulted from my brief encounter with Jack is not easy to put a finger on; finer points like these sink to the bottom of the story like silt, and they are slow to stir and fast to settle. And so afterward, my own life appeared to go on as usual, but inside I never recovered from this mysterious disruption -- it persisted and grew, taking on a life of its own. It was an altogether different person who packed a U-Haul and moved to New York City six months later.

Coincidentally, the week I arrived in the city marked the first anniversary of the infamous attacks. After a year of watching the crashes replayed silently on television hundreds of times, I was amazed to discover that the nervous energy in the late-summer air was literally audible; music and dancing and talking permeated every public place, every sidewalk, park, and rooftop rang with it. The city’s frantic grief and gratitude had somehow manifested as an enormous carnival that welcomed all. I knew that people back home were huddling in their homes in fear of follow-up attacks, honoring the tragic anniversary by watching grim candle-lit vigils and angry political speeches on TV. Joining the revelers in the land of the dead, I secretly felt I had answered the call to service.

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Death - XIII

1. A change not expected
2. Renewal and transformation
3. A new beginning.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

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"The Eyes Are Last To Go Out..."

Beginning a new cycle of cards on a somber note may seem like an unnecessary downer, but it almost can't be helped -- midwinter brings such moments upon us with stunning regularity. Besides, more than a handful of people close to me are going through break-ups or grieving lost loved ones right now, and it has been a mighty influence on me. Perhaps beginning with Death will inspire me to move forward in the new work and not look unnecessarily backward.

From the very first note it's clear why Antony and the Johnsons' new album is called "The Crying Light." It requires so little imagination to imagine Antony's singing (an acquired taste for many) as sobbing, especially during his tribute to his mother, Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground, in which he sings, "Her eyes are basking in the sun/ No one knows why she did the things she’s done/ Ocean, swallow me now." The rest of the album is equally elegiac, often soaring back and forth between euphoria and catatonia within the same song; in Epilepsy Is Dancing, Antony seems to be begging as he croons, "Cut me in quadrants/ leave me in the corner."

The title of that first song gave me a jolt the first time I saw it. Not an hour before, I'd been reading a poem by Tennessee Williams called "The Eyes," from his 1964 collection In the Winter of Cities. Here it is:

The eyes are last to go out.
They remain long after the face has disappeared regretfully
..........into the tissue that it is made of.
The tongue says good-by when the eyes have a lingering
..........silence,
for they are the searchers last to abandon the search,
the ones that remain where the drowned have been washed
..........ashore,
after the lanterns staying, not saying good-by...

The eyes have no faith in that too accessible language.
For them no occasion is simple enough for a word to justify it.
Existence in time, not only their own but ancestral,
encloses all moments in four walls of mirrors.

Closed, they are waiting. Open, they're also waiting.
They are acquainted,
but they have forgotten the name of their acquaintence.
Youth is their uneasy bird, and shadows clearer than light
pass through them at all times,
for waters are not more changeable under skies
nor stones under rapids.

The eyes may be steady with that Athenian look
that answers terror with stillness, or they may be quick
with a purely infatuate being. Almost always
the eyes hold onto an image
of someone recently departed or gone a long time ago
or only expected...

The eyes are not lucky.
The seem to be hopelessly inclined to linger.

They make additions that come to no final sum.
It is really hard to say if their dark is worse than their light,
their discoveries better or worse than not knowing.

but they are last to go out,
and their going out is always when they are lifted.


This poem seems to be illustrated beautifully by The Crying Light's cover, a portrait of Kazuo Ohno, a famous Japanese Butoh dancer. While most dancers consider themselves to be washed up once their body begins to show signs of age, Kazuo would say that they are just beginning to discover the human body's potential for expression. Over a hundred years old and now mostly confined to a wheelchair, Kazuo's physical transformation could hardly be called a decline -- it's an evolution, one that puts us face-to-face with how we experience the loss of our selves. This description of his later performances has given me a lot to consider lately, about the extent to which our life is bound up in our death, and vice versa:

"Kazuo Ohno has continued dancing as if he was nourished by his age. When he could not walk by himself, he danced with the supports by others.When he could not stand even with the supports, he danced as he seated himself. When his legs didn't move as he wanted, he danced with his hands. When he lost himself, he crawled on his knees and audience were so moved by watching his back."

Previously on Arcanalogue...

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DEATH

One of the first things people tend to learn about the Tarot is that the Death card isn't what it seems. I admit, it's pretty fun when the card comes up-- there's that split-second where the person sitting across from me stares and thinks, Oh great, I WOULD go and drawn the frigging Death card, wouldn't I? And then laughter. Joke never gets old.

Death itself is a joke that never gets old. If you click the card above, you'll be directed to a gallery containing 150 MB (may load slowly) of classical portrayals of Death in all his bony splendor, boosted from books, artwork and architecture dating back to the medieval period. The images range from grim to grimly humorous. But as the portal to this treasury, I've selected a much newer image by artist and tarot enthusiast Eric Thurnbeck. His Butterfly intaglio print (worth viewing large) has been burned into my mind as the ideal icon for this transformative moment.

Like a butterfly's metamorphosis, Death represents any development that's both inevitable and irreversible. As Eric once told me, the card is a door that one can pass through, but not return through. Once a new butterfly has dried its wings and taken flight, does it remember that its stalk-like body was once earthbound, wormlike? I doubt it. That's not necessarily a spiritual metaphor; our lives provide plenty of moments in which, all at once, we are no longer what we were. It's not necessarily tragic, but it is powerful and demands acknowledgment-- and if you let nature run its course, you may find yourself flying through whatever comes next, a wholly remade being.

The barrage of imagery in the linked gallery, however repetitive it may seem, offers a wonderfully saturating experience. How silly that we dread and avoid contact with something so innate! It is already here, always. A fact which is tragic and horrifying, but also humorous and tantalizingly mysterious, even erotic.

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