Death In The Big City

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-12 20:57

The big city doesn't like Death. Here, if they talk about her - only as something frightening: bandits, terrorist attacks, road accidents. Death, if and attracts attention - only if it did not occur naturally. And this is definitely - horror, tragedy, someone's mistake or malicious intent. Ideally, a big city wants to live forever. And apart from ideals, he does not recognize anything at all.

I am a city dweller to the core, albeit with peasant roots.

My grandmother, who was born and raised in a Siberian village, was very calm about death. Whoever we are talking about - a deceased relative, a good friend or a distant acquaintance, or a hamster who has lived with us for several months, who was eventually devoured by a cat.

The life-death-life cycles are perfectly visible in the village - in each sprouted spikelet, which has become a crop, grain and grass rotted in the autumn slush, and again born with new shoots. In a pestle running around the yard, which will become a chicken broth to restore health to a sick child. In a bull, whose birth was expected and maybe even helped, because then it will be slaughtered for the holiday.

Once, at a psychological group, I told an episode from my childhood. I loved to write all sorts of stories, and one day I told my grandmother that instead of lessons we ran to the nearest village, caught a chicken there, infected it at the stake and ate it. It seems that all this was to the fact that I really did not want to have a homemade dinner. My grandmother told me that it was not good to catch other people's chickens, the district police officer had already told her about our behavior and next time he would take us to the police.

Some of the band members (apparently quite urban) were horrified. What kind of fountains is this for a seven-year-old girl! Grab a chicken, roll its neck with your bare hands and fry it in blood! But in my then consciousness there was nothing like that. It's just that I have always loved fried chicken and perfectly understood where it comes from.

The city is an eternal escape from death. A frantic race for eternal youth, eternal beauty, eternal strength, eternal success. The ideal of the city is forever young mannequins in shining windows. They change clothes, hairstyles, makeup. But they themselves are just carriers of fashionable shells, nothing more. They should have an ideal figure and should not have any defects in the form of illness or death.

But Lady Death has not gone anywhere. It is everywhere - wherever you live and whatever you do. Here she sneaks up on a successful businessman and whispers: you have accumulated a lot of debts! No, not financial, completely different. You don't like to part with anything so much. You have collected so much that you consider yours. You love so much to control other people and everything they do for you. But I can pick up any of them, at any time. I can take anything from your property. I will bring fire, or water, or bandits to you. And if you persist and do not understand my hints, I will take you yourself.

Here she sneaks up on a sad office clerk, vegetating in a tiny apartment on a beggarly salary. Sits down next to the table when she went into a deep trance under the next TV series, without even noticing her transition. She does not hear the movie characters, she can clearly hear: Give me your insignificance! You have so much of it, and you save more and more. Give me your complaints about life, your envy of everyone who appears in your field of vision. Give me your grievances - you give birth to them for any reason, they run around you in a hungry crowd and you can never feed them, no matter how much you work. You still have a lot that really belongs to me, but now - give at least this. Yes, I know you will have to part with a very important part of yourself. But otherwise - I will come for you and take you whole. Don't be greedy and stupid! Give me mine.

Here she is next to a young mother, completely absorbed in her child. A woman walks somewhere, holding her child by the hand, but does not see either him or herself. Almost completely dissolved in the fog of her illusions and it is no longer clear where it ends and he begins. She cannot recognize the steps of Death, but she clearly hears how the words are formed in her head: Give me your pride for yourself and your child! Give up your empty dreams of his brilliant future, grown on your fears, watered with your unfulfilled dreams, generously fertilized with pictures from gloss and Hollywood melodramas. Give at least half of your requirements to him, after all, you yourself get confused in them and you cannot always explain coherently, there are so many of them and they are so incomprehensible, Yes, it will be very painful for you to part with this. Now it seems to you that it is like shaking an arm or a leg. But if you don’t, I’ll take your child first, and then you myself. And if you do, you will see that it was not a part of your body, but a cancerous tumor, from which it is high time to get rid of.

Here she is standing behind the shoulder of the gray-haired professor. He runs his finger along the lines of the book, but the letters refuse to fold into coherent text. He cannot grasp the essence, only fragments of memory tease him with sweet memories of the pleasure that these volumes once gave him. There is no one nearby, only books, mountains of books. But they are silent, turning from the best friends and the most desired lovers into a worthless heap of papers. And then he discerns a whisper, barely noticeable among the rustling of the pages: “Did you think to find salvation in these dead letters? You've been hiding here from life for years, hoping to escape from me? Did you think your knowledge is what will always be with you? Did you think that if your name is written many times on paper, and even in the honorable place of the author, this will save you from inevitable oblivion? How stupid you are, despite all your knowledge! All of them mean absolutely nothing to my gaze coming from the void. No matter how much knowledge you gather in your life, only one thing matters - how much has it changed your soul? What mark did you leave on your heart? The rest is nothing more than tinsel, dust to dust, ash to ash, nothing more. Stop clinging to your memory of what is irrevocably lost. Give me your regrets for what you lost, your stupid pride and eternal discontent. Live your last days with an open heart, because I am very close and there is no point in being afraid of me

Here she bent over a bedridden glutton, she has not left hospitals for a long time because of a thousand sores. Her brain is drugged with drugs and the horror of imminent death. She expects Lady Death to show mercy to her. But Death does not know what it is. She says as it is: Do you remember how you scraped the rest of the porridge from the sides of the pan? How she choked on another portion of soup - not because she was hungry, and not even because it was tasty, but because - not to throw it away! Do you remember how you taught your children the same thing, made them eat the last crumb, despite their tears? Do you remember going around in shabby clothes for the same reason? Do you remember how all my life I was ready to hang myself for a penny, although I was never poor? Do you remember how, going on vacation, I always took all-inclusive hotels, stuffed one more plate of buffet or cocktails on the beach, although it has long been out of the question, because it’s paid for! Do you remember how you slipped semi-rotten fruits to customers so as not to throw them away, but to make a profit? Every time you did it, you robbed me. Me - Mistress Death! Did you think - you can only take and not give? But I was always there. You have belonged to me for a long time. All you can do now is finally come to terms. And finally - to give.

Death is everywhere, in billions of points of the globe at the same time. And it is not scary for those who are not afraid of life. Because life is an eternal flow, where it is impossible to attract without letting go and take without giving. She is next to everyone and is always waiting for her gifts. If you persist, it will take you away. To give - sometimes you need to go through pain, fear, shame, self-pity. Everyone has their own horror stories and traps on the way to Death, but you can't live without them. The longer you resist, the more pain and fears come between you.

She needs to get hers. And she gets it. Constantly, every day - its gifts. Because otherwise, if you are greedy and self-serving, and do not want to give anything, she will take you.

She still stands behind your left shoulder.

"Hey hello! What will your gift be today? Because otherwise …"