Life And The Thing After That

We all die after all, I don't know why everyone is so afraid of talking about it. In my root culture, death is a good omen, e.g. a dream of death meaning a good thing is coming. Anyway, with the Schievo case hanging there, death has become a media frenzy and a popular subject. There was a story on the New York Times Sunday (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/weekinreview/27lela.html ), which I really like because the writer used Aristotle and Descartes to seek a definition of death. It's such a private matter that we are all irrelevant to discuss the Schievo case, let alone interfere in her life in anyway.

I have been really sick over the last few days, to the point that during a fever I thought I was dying (Ly, I know you start laughing, but better think about something than lying there like a zombie :)) I laughed at myself too, it's ridiculous to die from a cold. But again, if you can break your elbow just because of a slip, then anything is possible. When I told my professor Linda Killian: "it wasn't like I was saving the world," she laughed uncontrollably next to my hospital bed.

Of all people who have written about death ( or of all the things I have read) I perhaps like Graham Greene most. His character, Thomas Fowler, in the Quiet American, has this thought on death: "Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasureable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity."

I share his thoughts, although I don't want to die anytime soon. I have what he didn't: youth, future, hope, and a degree waiting for me. He had a lover, but love was the most uncertain thing. And lovers, you can always find them ;)

Anyway, I'll promise not to bring up this subject again, spring is around the corner. I'll take pictures of cherry blossom and post here.