Carmen Miranduck

"I don't know."
- The last words of Peter Abelard

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- Pancho Villa, deathbed request

"On the contrary."
- Henrik Ibsen's response to a Nurse's comment that he was doing much better that day. Immediately following, he died.


Only a Norwegian could go out with such wry style.

Have you ever been hit suddenly and forecefully with a bout of your own mortality? It happens to me periodically, usually for no aparent reason. I'll just be walking along as I was this morning to work and then BAM out of nowhere I just become intensely aware of myself as a transient state.

It's not a subject I have lots of big thoughts on. It's not one I've ever really been in a position to discuss much. But when I'm hit with these flashes there's an overwhelming... something. I don't know, it's not exactly sadness or fear specifically but there's hints of that mixed in. Resignation and the need to fight it take a little space in that feeling. More than anything I think it's just a great sense of amazement and wonder. How does one contemplate the end of consciousness?

You can't. Because in the same way you have the "so how big IS infinity?" crisis at 10, trying to think about the end of thinking makes you a snake eating its own tail. When I try sitting and thinking about morbid things in vague and general ways I just end up feeling really stupid, a walking 15 year old cliche (Remember the who would be sad if I died game?) What it comes down to is there's just no getting close to it when you're sitting in the sun drinking a raspberry mocha. And the realization of oneself as mortal isn't the same as becoming gothy and death obsessed. Awareness doesn't have to equal pursuit.

So I try instead to see what happens when I am hit by the awareness. The problem is I don't really know how to stay in that feeling. These flashes tend to be just that, flashes, if for no other reason than it's too intense a place to stay in for long. And beyond the reoccurring realization, there isn't much else to say on the subject. Some part of me thinks I should let that sink a little, let it under the skin. Use it to spur me on in my quest towards whatever I'm questing for, be it love, life and/or the pursuit of something resembling happiness. But usually I shake it away, try to distract myself with whatever else I can grab at.

But part of me wonders,if I had to face my own ending, had to face it right now, which of the three men might I agree with most? I'd love to say that I'd pull an Ibsen. Would love to be that composed in the face of everything and nothing that I could pull out the ultimate cool. But I doubt it. Which might lead me to Mr Villa, wishing I had those last parting shots to hit a bullseye but coming up with only blanks. But while I don't give myself the Ibsen factor I also want a little more credit than the Villa seems to have given himself.

So maybe Abelard it will have to be. It's short, simple, classy. An answer that begets a million questions. One that bespeaks a great humility in oneself, a knowledge of one's own lack of knowledge. And I freely admit, I don't know, about anything really. Not yet. But I keep hoping. Keep hoping that someday, I will.