It's surprising how quickly the days pass even though I don't have a job. It makes me wonder, when I did work and when I eventually work again, how I ever got anything done.
I realized over the weekend that I am in fact no longer a spring chicken. This is a realization that I seem to be having more and more frequently, but now it's gone beyond finding - and pulling mercilessly - unwanted wirey white hairs from my head.
I can see many of you rolling your eyes, but bear with me. This weekend I was again struck that I am getting older when my friends and I drank too much rum and then basically spent the entire next day in bed recovering. I guess we don't bounce back like we used to. Then the realization resurfaced as our conversations tended at times toward wrinkles, home-buying and wedding and baby showers. Ahem. Choke.
Well, then in a context entirely unrelated (or least not intentionally), we got to talking about death. As my friend was discussing her thesis (not to be divulged or really butchered by my ignorance on these pages), we began discussing just what you should do, or perhaps what your loved ones should do, with your body once you die. I always thought cremation was a reasonable plan, considering it's a total waste of space to bury bodies in the ground, we are running out of space, and I loathe cemeteries and don't want people to associate my life with such wastelands.
But then, apparently cremation is bad for the environment, and something like a third of mercury emissions are from burning our dental fixtures in the cremation process. And my brother once explained something about how burning bodies sucks energy from the atmosphere and creates more negative energy or something like that that skimmed somewhere just over my head.
Enter promession. Developed by a Swedish biologist, apparently it's a method of environmentally ethical body decomposition that involves freeze drying the body in liquid nitrogen, reducing it to a fine powder, removing all the artificial bits and then burying it in some kind of biodegradable casket. The idea is then the body will naturally become part of the earth, providing the proper nutrients for plant growth. I don't know much about it - in fact those last sentences were the extent of it. But so far it sounds like a more reasonable alternative to burial, which seems antiquated and unreasonable, and cremation. I understand it's still being developed, and from what I can see, it's slow to make waves in the U.S., but count me as a believer.
Which kind of brings me to the question: Should I have a living will? Morbid, I know, but I wonder when one is supposed to deal with such matters. I don't have any possessions to speak of, but should it be written somewhere who is in charge of my body and what I want done with it?
On a much lighter note, after much frustration on the job search front, I decided to dedicate some time each day to practicing Spanish. To this end, I went to the bookstore and bought a colorful children's book that I could read and translate. It's called El Capitan Calzoncillos. Already, I didn't know that last word, but bought it anyway, only to discover calzoncillos means underwear. I am reading a book called "Capitan Underwear and the perverse plan of Professor Pipicaca." I don't think Pipicaca translates, or perhaps it translates quite clearly. So that partially explains the cartoon picture on the cover of a bald, pink child wearing nothing but tighty whities and a red cape. Awesome.
Oh, and the title of this post is a quote I heard on NPR this weekend that seemed somehow fitting, or at least funny enough to share. It's from a Southern woman talking about the only circumstance in which it was acceptable for one to miss church: if you'vr got one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel.
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7 comments:
1. If you are getting old, what does that make me????
2. The book is really translated Captain Underpants... not Captain Underwear.
1. I expected some to respond with this. I don't know how old you are, so I can't answer that question. But it doesn't take away from an albeit young person realizing she isn't going to be young forever. That's not a bad thing, just new.
2. I appreciate the clarification. I suppose I found little difference between "underpants, briefs" and underwear. If in fact there is a clear distinction, I concede. It is indeed Capitan Underpants.
My thought on cremation is basically that it is a waste of energy. Burning of bodies changes them from a state of highly ordered energy to one of highly disordered (and nearly unrecoverable) energy. Basically, this does not need to happen.
When an organism ingests another organism, like every life form does, it makes use of the highly ordered potential energy in the structures of organic bodies (proteins, fats, etc..). This process begins with the transformation of light from the sun into energy to drive the ordering of organic compounds. Plants do this everyday. Humans, on the other hand, rely more on structured compounds rather than pure electromagnetism. This can also be said of plenty of organisms.
So burning or freeze-drying or any of that shit really missed the point of death. Life on Earth has been ordering energy for billions of years and by not sharing your (dead) body with the rest of life robs it (just a little bit) of this ordered energy. You pull yourself out of the cycle that made and sustained you. How selfish.
My point (finally) is that as gross as it may seem, letting things eat you is the most efficient (and natural) use of your stored energies, at least in the material sense. Hold your Cartesian conjectures for another debate.
OK duely noted.
But does the freeze-drying bit create disordered energy too?
And are there hazards - public health or otherwise - to simply tossing bodies in the ground to decompose? Is there proper oxygen at 6 feet deep for this, and what about the artificial stuff that won't decompose?
(Clearly I have more research to do, but I thought it to be an interesting debate nonetheless.)
How much longer are you gonna be upstate??? If you want, I can show you my hood!
OK one more thing on promession for anyone who was interested in this part of the post. Then I'll let it go, I promise. This is a comment sent to me by email (edited):
"[the idea of letting things eat you] is for me too romanticized. our bodies, of course, were meant for the dirt, for the sun, for the worms, for the birds, for the forest. this is the universe's plan I agree; this is the natural plan.... however, i need to be a bit more realistic. this is a real problem for rapidly growing cities. americans, quite unfortunately, do not think like [that]. nor does the funeral/cemetery business. the way we commit our bodies is entirely unnatural and blindly unquestioned. we are in fiberglass, velvet lined, boxes shoved 5 deep (literally in nyc) in the suburban ground, pumped full of all kinds of embalming shit that totally fucks up the water table.... we need - i mean need - a new alternative that can be available on a mass scale, an impactable scale. [that option] is not a viable alternative for the 60,000 people who die in NYC each year. instead we can use technology to REforrest. here where promession is interesting choice. I think, it does not miss the point of death. the freeze drying and all that is just a detail--a means to an end, a way to make your body organic dust that is compostable."
Thank you so very much for understanding the difference beween Cremation and Promession. It was not meant to be a romantic method only. It was also ment to be a realistic alternative. It hopefully gives us a chance to reflect. Im happy if you can see that this could be a possibility to stay in the organic cycle of life also after our death.
Thank you for the discussion and for your interest.
Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak
www.promessa.se
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