phoenix

Does the phoenix fear the unmanageable pain of death? Even with such certainty, rebirthing by design, does the phoenix ever doubt? Does he wonder, if just this one death will not be refunded, just this last, most recent immolation, was it worth it? Was *this* life acceptable? And the means of my death – were they justified?

A scenario to illustrate. God tells a young man he will reincarnate upon death. The young man believes it, gathers up some friends, and jumps off a building to prove his blessing. He slams into the ground, explodes into ashes, and is reborn in flames.

The crowd is shocked and amazed.

As he finds himself intact, as he’d been assured, another pedestrian or two come along, and the crowd chants for more. “Do it again,” they say! Enjoying the celebrity, the boy hurls himself from the building again.

And he promptly dies. And he stays dead.

The crowd moves along, tells an amazing and unbelievable story, and the next day, the front page of the newspaper features something else, as expected.

When we take ourselves to task, back to the drawing board, back into death, back into debilitating fear, into nothingness, into our primordial souls – can we stand by those reasons? This is similar to my earlier article, ‘no regrets’.

But this time, I think I may have immolated in a very foolish way.

This time, I am so scared I won’t wake up. So easily this phoenix forgot the terror of death. There is no courage, only blessed ignorance of what’s involved. You push and push at these boundaries, and you wonder, how far can I take this shit, this person, this me, this self, out to the borders, before I drop orbit and I’m truly fuckin gone.

I can’t even try to open my eyes this time. I can’t watch, I’m just shaking.

I am so scared.

~ Driz

~ by drizitche on April 12, 2008.