I am alive for now for ever for all time among you all my beautiful

Lately, since July 27th when my aunt died, I've wondered why I'm not bereft of happiness, why I'm not completely filled with anguish. I've tried to place it in the pocket of "I didn't know her very well," but I had to quickly remove it because I realized that that is not why I am seemingly apathetic towards the death of one hell of a woman. I realized how I feel about death, and how it became solidified.

Death is an illusion. We live on far longer than our hollow grave of a body would like to think. Our bodies are so fragile, like a lamp being shipped, that the packing peanuts are soon to give and we are soon to break. It's obvious. It's unavoidable. That's obvious.

It's also obvious that we live on far beyond what our body says is our life. Our soul, our reputation, live on in the words and actions of the others we have influenced, the others who took from us the good which we held and melded it with the good of others (as well as the caveats of miscreants) to create the next person. And suddenly it trickles into generations--our influence is diluted, sure, but it is ours, and we are forever within this good Earth. People have searched for the tree of life, when in truth we are the tree of life, our branches stretching out among the reeds to hug along the river.

And that is evolution.

And this is why our relationships and our loves must hinder more on emotion and soul & spirit as opposed to physical attraction. Our bodies are finite and crumbling and fragile by the day while our soul lives on among the rushes among our memories that meet on the porch near the fireflies and bats at dusk. If a relationship is merely the husk of lust, what is it that beneath but blackened and burnt corn that is nothingness when you die? I want the husk to, when I perish, to reveal corn so yellow and so delicious that people will remember me and my lover as the greatest cob ever to be passed among the mouths of this goddam forest.

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And this whole thing brought up another odd theological question: Why must I include heaven in all talk of death? What if I don't believe that we should focus so much on the afterlife, as if religion is a crutch for our fear of death more than it is a faith and a passion? Why was I so compelled to say that our souls and inspirations live on while our spirits dance and praise Him in heaven when it was not a part nor a participle nor a precept of the above thought? It's as if I have to inject Western Christian Apocalyptics into everything I touch involving God.

Life is everything, make it the best you can for Him. And he will understand all your efforts as your spirit drifts up above you eternal soul above your addled and rotting body.