there's this scene in my head, it's been there for as long as i can remember. i am not sure, now, if it is daydream or memory, if it actually happened or if it was a daydream that i held so long and so hard that it became part of my mental landscape permanently. it's a strange property of the mind that a memory and a daydream often can feel the same; you'd want to say that a memory would be more vivid, would somehow seem more "real". but it's not so, a well laid and particularly lush daydream can affect us the same as a memory of something that actually happened. i wonder if this is the same for everyone, if this is a common question people ask themselves "daydream or memory?"

this scene is like this:

i am sitting on the top step of the cement steps that lead to the front door of my parents' house. it's late october, early november. it's like 9 or 10 in the morning, the light is golden, it comes through the ivy in the atrium, i lights up all teh boganvilla that is twisted up in the metal gate-like barriers at the front of it. the wind is blowing, it's the timbre of the tree in front of my house sighing. i would know the sound of that tree and those leave with my eyes closed, it sounds different than any other tree and leaves i have ever heard. i know this sounds ridiculous, but i had a bedroom right next to that tree for years, i would lay with body half on bed and half on empty bricked filled flowerbox and watch the leaves that stretched out from across the sidewalk, up our large southern californian front lawn and even up onto our roof. the leaves were like windchimes and sometimes i couldn't tell the two apart, if it was late enough in the afternoon and my eyelids were heavy enough. i love that tree, so much i never carved it or even really climbed it. its branches were too high for short grasping hands.

"praised be wood, it is milk"

so i am sitting on the cool cement step, and i am listening to the windchime leaves, and i am waiting for something, or taking a break from washing my father's car, or it's a holiday weekend and i am just taking a moment away from whatever's going on inside.

and it's the loneliest feeling, it's self-composed and head held high, but it is lonely. and it is beautiful.

but it's the quality of the air, and the gold of this morning, and listnening to julie doiron and nick drake. all these together, all over me this morning and it's making these cube walls too close together, and the sounds of everything around me the ugliest i have ever heard.

except for julie doiron and nick drake.

and i am reading the saddest news story i have read in a long time, and it's making me confused and somewhat angry with myself.

i am reading about that crematorium in georgia and i am so upset with myself because upon first reading it i thought to myself "well, really, what did the guy/family do that was wrong to the bodies themselves? sure, telling people that he/they were performing a service and taking money to perform that service and then not pulling through, certainly that's wrong. but to the bodies, i wonder what's the deal?"

before you get too pissed, consider my reasoning, just for a moment: if, as a religious person, you believe in the soul and that upon death that the soul is reunited with god, or that it goes to heaven/purgator/hell, or whathaveyou, then obviously the important part of a person, what makes them them, and, relatedly, what (perhaps) gives them rights as a person, is their soul, right?

but you'd only want to say that about an embodied soul, right? i mean, how would one impart rights to a soul that's not somehow coupled with a body? and, if that's the case, why would you afford rights to a body without a soul?

and, obviously, you'd want to say that upon death the soul leaves the body, otherwise how much more hideous would we think death is, being trapped in this horrific decaying body. isn't that a big part of the soul/afterlife reasoning? that you are released from this suffering on earth, this human body of pain and bodily sensation to find your reward in the hereafter?

so according to this line of thought, obviously, the important part of you has left the building so to speak. what's left is a shell and a physical reminder of what you looked like right before you left this earth.

now, take the other route, suppose you are a person who doesn't believe in the soul, in fact you don't believe in an afterlife at all. in this case, you'd probably want to say that any rights a person (perhaps) has they would only have as a living being, because once you die, that's it, game over.

i don't know on what grounds someone would afford rights to a dead body.

so, if this is my thinking, then upon first hearing about this story, though repugnant, i thought to myself "i wonder if he is going to be brought up on some charges related to the way the bodies were treated" since obviously this is what people are in an uproar about.

AND THEN

i realized i am a freak of nature, heartless to the very core.

because what i realized, as i read further, is that the rights that were violated in this case were most likely that of the families who survived the dead, not the dead themselves. and then i realized that's why we have traditions around death, that it is for the benefit of those who have survived and not for the dead. i know this is something that most people must know already, but i had never really given it thought before. i am very lucky that i have not had to.

and then i started to feel a very deep and overwhelming sadness for these people. this is truly terrible for them.

i have not finished reading the stories, i'm going to go to them now.

i hope farther into the stories they start to find out why.