Me, My Prussian Blues (and That Guy With the Horns)

Coffins are such a waste.

One of the more expensive, horrid uses for trees nowadays. Who dies and says Yes, go ahead and end some unassuming plant life so that my corpse may be more comfortable in dispose. Go ahead and line it with red velvet; paint me in colours I never wore in life; dress me in luxury I would never have paid for; while you're at it mark the place of my eternal repose so that all may know where it is I slowly fossilize.

While they're at it, why don't they bury all your friends and felines with you?

When I die, bury me in dirt. The old-fashioned way. If I'm feeling particularly bitter in my middle or old age, I may request a cremation and dramatic toss into the nearest zephyr.
Don't let strangers dress my corpse; let them plug me in the ground and be done with it. The dirt has called for me all my life; gravity is quite persistent. It is the way of the world for the dead to be recycled back into life as raw fuel. Why should we endeavour to curtail this process? Why preserve the face you wore in life while it is closeted beneath the dirt and soon to be forgotten? Bury me without the gimcrackery, the nonsensical décor, the pomp and circumstance.

Inevitably nature's grave robbers will find the organic goo of my eyes and burrow through to Da Nao's empty temple. They will soon pluck the flesh from my ribs and the muscle of my heart. Maybe some day the cold unforgiving New England ground will crack and push my bones to the surface once more in a big hello to the sun after the coming ice age has carved the world a new face.

I think it's sort of glorious, in my own way.

But to wrap myself in human goods and manufactured traditions in the moment I can at last return to the evil dust from whence I came? Stubborn, disgusting, foolish.

It's not for novelty, not for heroics or for the inherent teenage desire to hack through the brambles rather than take the beaten path... in fact, I don't know what it is. I know exactly what I'm not, but nothing of what I am.

I know I don't care for a beautiful death. Holden wanted to die beautiful. Boromir didn't. Harry did. Shade didn't. Arthur did. Most do. It has nothing to do with nobility or integrity, either, just a humble dislike for attention and various other personal reasons. Like chocolate and vanilla ice cream, most just prefer one. I think the scales are tipped in this case. Nobody dreams of drowning, so at last they can be found by their loved ones as a bloated up and faintly blue remnant of their former acquaintance, is that a lung half puked out of her mouth? No, most want a beautiful death. A dignified death.
Perhaps I have some hope that my bare bones will be much more beautiful than anything life ever did for me.

My parents and fellows will deny me this wish in favour of conventionality, I fear.

Even my bones will crumble eventually. The oozy remnants of reeking marrow would put an unlovely breath of yellow over my weakening calcium deposits and leftover ivory surfaces. Maybe when time pushes me to the surface or the government digs me up to make room for new corpses, some hound will take interest in what's left of my skull and after playing, snap it between ghostly canine jaws.

It's sort of glorious.