If you ever panic about the impermanence of life, if you ever get worried about your job, your relationships, your future, if you fear death, the best way to put all that turmoil to rest is to reassure yourself that death will come _ surely, whether you worry or not, whether you try to stop it or not.
All of it will end _ surely.
Since you know this, you could conceivably go berserk and kill everyone you ever hated before you kill yourself.
This is one obvious scenario. And daily headlines tell us some people really do this, thinking they are justified.
OK and so why doesn't everybody go out and do this, since death comes oh so surely.
We want to leave this world a better place for those who are still alive, and this means that we don't really deep inside believe that death ends everything, though it comes, surely, as we know it.
There is something else that goes on forever.
Like our love for our children, including other people's children.
Simple things like the light of the stars, the taste of food in our mouths, a blade of grass, the scentless smell of the wind.
Simple things that are so forever complex.
About Me
- Yuri Kageyama
- Poet, writer in Tokyo. "The New and Selected Yuri _ Writing From Peeling till Now" Ishmael Reed Publishing Co. 2011. "Peeling" I. Reed Press. Poems, stories, essays in "Y'Bird" "Pow Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience _ Short Fiction from Then to Now" "San Francisco Stories" "On a Bed of Rice" "Konch" "Breaking Silence" "Greenfield Review" "Beyond Rice" "River Styx" "Other Side River" "Yellow Silk" "Stories We Hold Secret" "MultiAmerica" and other publications. Read with Ishmael Reed, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Geraldine Kudaka, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Russel Baba, Seamus Heaney, Shozu Ben, Winchester Nii Tete, Eric Kamau Gravatt, Takenari Shibata, Toshinori Takimoto, Teruyuki and Haruna Kawabata, Keiji Kubo, Yumi Miyagishima, Carl Freire, Abel Coelho, Yuri Matsueda. "Talking TAIKO" a film by Yoshiaki Tago documents her poetry. "A Back Alley Asian American Love Story of Sorts" by Niccolo Caldararo of her story was shown at the San Francisco and New York Asian American film festivals, won awards at the 1986 Palo Alto Film Festival, 1987 Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1988 Onion City Film Festival. Magna cum laude Cornell University, M.A. the University of California Berkeley.
2 comments:
People think of themselves as invincible u.u even though they seek to find ways to live longer, the truth is... you will die, it's a fact, I think that theproblem is that people fear of the unknown, where are their souls going after? not all of the people are shure, uncertainty is part of human nature, and like the rest of the elements that form our nature, not recognized.
Excellent post Miss Yuri!!!
Thanks for your kind words. We are so connected in our thoughts and our spirit _ despite the physical distance that separates us.
What I find interesting these days is that this fear of death changes over time.
The fear I felt as a child, the fear I felt in my 20s and the fear I feel as I age, etc. are all the same fear but also evolving. I am not sure what all this means.
In one sense, the fear intensifies. In another sense, the fear feels farther away. But death should be approaching and feel closer as you get older, right?
Maybe I'm still not old enough! In some Noh pieces, the artist just barely gets going as the dancer becomes 60. It is an art that requires decades to perfect. It is almost life itself. Or death.
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