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Reflection for All Soul’s Day "Most things don’t happen. This one will." Philip Larkin In Mexico, they line up the little skeletons on All Soul’s Day, jaunty clay skeletons in dioramas like the one you made for your fifth grade report about people in far off lands. They smoke cigars, they sit in cantinas. They lie in dentist chairs with skeleton dentists picking their bones instead of teeth. They line up in mariachi bands with guitars and marimbas, They dance, they sit in offices with skeleton secretaries, they go on with things. The ancient Etruscans shaped pint-sized clay houses just like the ones they lived in, and they lodged their ashes there forever. Inside, the ashes of mother and child, husband and wife mingled together in that final house just like the house they once breathed in together, only now without their bodies. How big is the house of the soul? What is its address? Who is the builder? Who lives in the diorama, in the house of clay, in the city on a cloud? For eternity, would I choose a clay house just like my house, mix my ashes with these same people, spend forever in a pint-sized diorama where my clay skeleton teaches little skeletons? Of course, that’s what I want, to be me. It’s all I know. Without this me, there is no Christmas morning with Barbie dolls, no first day of my sons’ lives, no prospect of the lottery, no kisses that go on and on–– But this me in eternity––is she worth preserving? Why would anyone want to be Jerry Lewis forever? Ronald Reagan forever? Regis Philbin forever? Vanna White forever? To be my father, doleful without end? eternity with those people? Why would they want to spend eternity being themselves? To spend eternity being myself? Everlasting, everlasting eternity? In a little clay house, In a little diorama, In a little penitentiary? |
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