Momento mori, II: arriving at the end

Momento mori, I: beginnings

George Rosen: Happy Birthday (1910--1977)

Happy Birthday, dearest father; the card I painted for you when I was a child, says it all.
And you as a child you looked forward with joy and curiosity about all that there is in this world. And the man you became: the learned physician and eminent historian of medicine and public health who eagerly shared your knowledge practical, factual, and theoretical with students and colleagues. You took knowledge out of the ivory tower and made it efficacious in health policy, with the intent always of improving the well-being of humankind. How fortunate I was to have you as my father.

The Murderous Child

green . . . trust . . . muderous intent
the illness manifests itself
death and blood

Desire: the imminent union

desire
the moment of realization
the radiant space
before the first embrace

Flaying Alive: another case of sympathetic fallacy?

According to Aristotle and Descartes, animals cannot experience pain because they lack rational souls. Vegetation, being on the lowest rung of the hierarchy, as constructed in antiquity and maintained thereafter, is not endowed with reason or emotion. Its "soul," being the most primitive cannot suffer. An exemplum is the cork tree. Even when its skin is removed and its flesh exposed to the elements, it cannot think and it does not have sensation. Such is its fate. But man can impose his notions on that tree and imagine it to possess sensation or see it as an exemplum of the human or animal condition.

Ecstatic Discovery

seeking
finding
the ecstatic embrace