To Want To Decay
Flesh
I am flesh and I am bone. I am hair follicle and finger nail. I am keratin.
Spirit
I am body and I am brain. I am spirit.
Electricity
I am electrical signals that compel flesh and bone to move. Keratin grows without my impulse, without input from me.
I use my body to cut keratin when it grows unwieldily
as a farmer threshes the fields.
When life leaves flesh and bone, will I fight or will I succumb to the stillness of death? ................I will fight.
The flesh will demand it of itself.
When life leaves brain will I fight or will I succumb to the great nothing. I will not fight. The spirit would not want to.
Spirit would want...
I don't really know and I'm far from the first to ponder.
Want
Would spirit want my flesh to burn and bones to turn to dust. Would spirit want to continue on? untethered from the prison of flesh that it inhabits, if that truly is where spirit resides.
How would body move into the future? How would brain move into the future? How would bone, hair follicle, keratin. How would spirit?
Can we be relegated to data points as in Gray Matters?
- Is brain just data?
- Or does spirit tethered to brain equal data?
- Does spirit tethered to body tethered to brain by tiny spaghetti tendrils equal data?
- Or does spirit tethered to brain equal data?
Can that data be quantified, stored and translated back in recognisable form? Can that data be compressed?
Life ≥? Data
If life leaves flesh, should the data continue? If data corrupts, should flesh continue?
When last electrical impulse leaves body and brain, what data remains? Are my thoughts - written into words - still my thoughts when flesh and brain and bone and spirit is gone?
What is legacy of body if it does decay? Should body be preserved in vat or placed in frozen stasis?
What is legacy of brain if body is stored? Does data survive? Where? How? Can data be accessed by body later?
What is legacy of spirit?
Is legacy of spirit an imprint?
Legacy ≥? Imprint
Are present thoughts already memories as they leave brain? If brain uses sounds to make words (and sound doesn't travel instantaneously) am I hearing the memory of thoughts as I hear the sounds brain used to make words?
Does body travel into the future or does body move away from the past?
Is body in present and does future move around body into the past?
Do I imprint body upon another body to create another body? Is that right? Is that just? Is that legacy? Does new brain of new body care about past?
Is body of mine a memory for new body? Is that how body of mine moves into future away from past?
Are my words a memory for new brain?
Do I want to stay here? Does any of this matter?
What do I want? My brain in a jar?
I want my brain to find the permanent peace alongside my body. To rot and to decay.
- Or?
- Do?
- I?
New Body
What does new body want for body of mine? Will it be a choice for me to decide? Will I have agency over the destiny of my body? My brain? My spirit? My memories?
Do I want new body to feel the torture of not knowing what to do with my flesh?
Keep me as powder in a box in your house somewhere?
Spread powder into the ocean. Onto the land. Into the air.
Mix powder with milk from cow and take powder into stomach. Digest powder. Digest the memories of body of mine.
New body? Future body?
Who will you be?
What will your spirit look like?
Will you know like I don't?
Will you let me decay.
I want to want to decay.
I want to decay.
Want decay.
Decay
D
Written by Travis DeVries at.....