The Philosophy Bunch discussed the topic of euthanasia.  Death is not an event which merely happens to each of us as individuals.  Dying is a process measured by time, and there are infinite ways to die.  It is exceeding rare for anyone to die without the involvement of others.  (Death must be the definitive refutation of individualism.)  Dying is agonizing for everyone in the near circle with the one “whose time has come.”  Death has everything to do with time.; “time” not as abstraction but the tensile strength of our relationship matrix.  The death of anyone close to me is personal.

Do we not wish for more time?  I feel the gradual dissolution of my physical faculties with aging as a search of lost time.  This is something I cannot, despite the most extreme measure of expenditure, of the utilization of medical means (Botox, sculpting with plastic surgery), or by disciplined rigor of workout routines, — grasp, hold onto.

Mortality stalks everyone of us.  Usually this reality is veiled by necessary problem solving, pursuit of success, and for us Americans, by our amusements.  Nevertheless what we have in common, you and I are a-being-in-pain.

Death is a wave that breaks upon those we love, who are close to us.  We weep.

Do we not desire, above all else, “a good death” for ourselves and for our loved ones?

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If one fails to perceive a nonchalant movement,
setting aside the most well established problems,
playing with everything (in particular with misfortune, suffering),
veiling success under the cover of depression,
I am, if one sticks to this,
a being in pain…

It seems to me that the singular narrative
that is In Search of Lost Time –
in which life slowly breaks down and dissolves in inanity
(in an inability to be grasped) and yet grasping the ocellar points
in which it resolves itself – that is the truth of a sob.

Sobbing signifies broken communication.
When communication – the sweetness of intimate communication
– is broken by death, separation, or disagreement,
I feel growing in myself, in the laceration,
the less familiar gentleness of a sob.

…It is comparable in sobs to the spark that is caused
by pulling an electrical cord out of the wall.
It is precisely because communication is broken
that we feel it as a tragedy when we weep.

-excerpt On Nietzsche, by Georges Bataille, trans. by Stuart Kendall p. 64

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Is there a song for today?  Metallica covers Bob Seger’s, Turn The Page.  Life is a road is it not?  We are all road-dogs.  Here I go again, turn the page!  A bitter-sweet anthem of triumph; laughter and music trumps the truth of a sob.

Turn The Page

By Metallica

On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha
You can listen to the engine moanin’ out its one-note song
You can think about the woman, or the girl you knew the night before

But your thoughts will soon be wandering, the way they always do
When you’re riding sixteen hours and there’s nothing there to do
And you don’t feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through

Here I am, on a road again
There I am, on the stage
Here I go, playing star again
There I go, turn the page

Well, you walk into a restaurant all strung-out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you as you’re shaking off the cold
You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to explode

Most times you can’t hear ’em talk, other times you can
All the same old clichés, is it woman, is it man?
And you always seem outnumbered, so you don’t dare make a stand

Here I am, on a road again
There I am, on the stage
Here I go, playing star again
There I go, turn the page

Out there in the spotlight you’re a million miles away
Every ounce of energy you try to give away
As the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play

Later in the evening as you lie awake in bed
With the echoes from the amplifiers ringin’ in your head
You smoke the day’s last cigarette, remembering what she said

Here I am, on a road again
There I am, up on the stage
Here I go, playing star again
There I go, turn the page

Here I am, on a road again
There I am, on the stage, yeah
Here I go, playing star again
There I go, there I go

Lyrics by Bob Seger