Letter from the Editor

1:27pm, 5-1-2019

Why Death?

This issue is a kind of vanitas still life, a reminder that this bustling busy living might end in a rather unexpected manner.

The choice lies between short and ugly or long and ugly, otherwise it appears rather inevitable. Perhaps some of us may be hit by a vehicle while holding a go-to Durfee’s swipe? Or maybe a few are a little too careless while walking between subway trains? Or, say, ocean water in Puerto Rico may give us a sense it can engulf us? A range of options, a list, letters on the page thrown together. Yet, what is it so harrowing about thinking of each of them in terms of one’s own life?

It may be the understanding of the fragility of the proper body, which appears as a constraint for the existence of mind. A sort of a dualistic impression of self. The body gives us clues that we need to accept our mind’s dependence on it. Why are we so afraid of Alzheimer’s? Is depression just a disarrangement of hormones or is it a signal of something the mind cannot comprehend? Too often we are confronted with the fact that no matter how highly we think of ourselves, the body can go out of control and all we can do is to accept it and carry on.

When we’re facing the death of loved ones, pain and heartbreak seem to be unprecedented. Yet, with time, they appear as threads that connect all the ones alive. We discover this by talking, letting grief flow out with our words, writing about it, allowing it to slip between pencil strokes or between texts. We discover this by listening to what others have to say, catching their words, looking at their art, and being there for them in the moments of need.