I saw a funeral today. The cars, lining up in front of a Victorian house where a modest crowd assembled, were covered in flowers. Beautiful flowers. From the distance I stopped to observe. You can tell how people in funerals, despite their sad faces and their limited understanding, momentarily fathom the beauty of death. There they were these four impeccable black cars. They shined with such joy that you could almost hear the trumpets of heaven, blowing in all their glory. The first one, the hearse, was covered with the most amazing bouquet I have ever seen. So intense was the white of the flowers, so smooth their petals and so erect their stamens that its very sight put me straight away in a heavenly state. In contrast, the background of black and white smoking, weeping and murmuring narcissus, looking at their reflections on each other, dropped the image of a guillotine. I could hear the wooden structure creaking, slicing with its elegy right across the souls of a silent audience. There it came out of the house like an immense razor. The lustre of the ebony coffin somehow made it look lighter. When that procession crosses the town, I thought, the onlookers will turn their heads in awe and anguished confusion, and some will even silently wish they were the corpse. If you think about it, most of them are probably dead already. The elegance of that peculiar delegation brings them out of their miseries for the moment they hold on their breaths. There it was again, that unique sublime feeling you get when the stiffness of a dead cold body and the fiery bursting of a blossomed bouquet blend. There it was again the deep, immeasurable space and the exploding supernova. Life and death. Death covered with the most exquisite example of life. They cry because they cannot hold in their chest their immense joy. Their eyelids, clamped wide open, expose the corneas, pupils and irises to the flames of a pleasure they never though of this world. No priest has enough holy water to put that fire out. No verse, parable, proverb, oracle, theorem or prophecy can ever render in words that blow of pure ecstasy, that mystical orgasm, which momentarily shakes their entire existence. Because it is at that very moment, when words or thoughts have no meaning, that they feel most alive.
I love this world and the people in it. I want them to feel alive. It requires some sacrifice. But it is worth it. It is a million times worth it.
