I found this mini-essay in a remarkable and unusual book called "101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life" ( by Roger Pol-Droit) . The book consists of 101 " everyday adventures" each of which can each become the starting point for that astonishment which becomes philosophy. Other examples are, for instance, the strange feeling you get when coming out of a darkened cinema into the light and bustle of a sunny day, or inventing other lives for yourself, driving through a deep dark forest, or strangest of all, pissing and drinking a big glass of water simultaneously. Have fun !!! So ...here's one ....... CONTEMPLATE A DEAD BIRD Duration 10 to 15 minutes. Props a dead bird, preferably dead for several days Effect meditative They're to be found pretty much everywhere in the country. Especially in spring or in the middle of summer. Either a fledgling fallen from the nest, or a juvenile attacked by a hawk or an adult riddled with shot. The causes are not your concern. The why and the wherefore. Rather than walk on, leaving the dead bird behind, you will stop and contemplate it. Look closely at the dulled feathers, often covered with dust or a bit of earth. Observe its eye, coloured or whitish or eaten out, and the ants coming and going,and makbe a few maggots. note its claws, quite still, abandoned, twisted. Look for the bones, so slender and so visible. Above all, remark the whole attitude of abasement and loss, the way a dead bird is so thoroughly a corpse, muddied and humiliated, in the truest sense, and yet it knows nothing of all this, and escapes from it into a depth quite alien to sleep. If you look closely enough, you'll probably find the sight a sad one initially. A life snuffed out. A body misplaced, a bird lying on the ground, all stiff. Something resembling defeat and failure. The experiment consists in going beyond that, by seeing more and more clearly and distinctly. You see that the bird will never live again. And also that it feels nothing. That is how it is, beyond help and complaint. Innocent of nostalgia or recrimination. The longer you look the clearer it should become that there is nothing ,concerning this little corpse, which can be cause for regret. There is only the present. And you start to realise that it is perfect. Because it is the only tense there is. At first, this is incomprehensible. Strictly speaking, it may never be given to us really to understand, only to feel. What you will grasp, however, if you open your eyes wide enough, is that there is no other world to see. That everything, absolutely everything, is here and now. In the present, as it occurs. There is nothing elsewhere, or before, or anywhere in space or time, that is different, better, preferable, comparable, regrettable. Nothing but this. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Maybe we should thing of dying as a sort of "Last Dance" .....
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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