I keep looking at the roses on my desk. Yellow and red, my favorite type of rose. Dying. And all the while, I got Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue in my head. I like Nick Cave. He seems like a bit of a psycho, but a very well-spoken, well-read one. The best kind.
On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
She lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
And I kissed her goodbye, said, "All beauty must die."
And I leant down and planted a rose 'tween her teeth.
Roses seem to be the only flowers that look good while dying. Most flowers just brown and wilt, but not roses. Little bud of tragedy and grace.
My head's not where it should be. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the reminder that everything must die, beautiful or otherwise. I've been reading a book by Irvin Yalom, an American psychiatrist, dealing a lot with death. Called "Creatures of a Day" in English, except the person recommending it recommended it to me in Romanian, where it's called something wonderful like "The Ephemerals". All that passes.
It's actually a very touching read, quite light and summery, as it examines encounters with various patients. Yet for once, in such a book, I found the therapist's story to be more entertaining and moving than those of his patients. Most of the stories in the book take place when Yalom was in his early 80s, and deeply aware of his mortality. In fact, several of his patients are in their latter years, which forces the doctor to examine his own impending fear of death. There's one, though, a businessman in his 30s I think, with whom the therapist becomes quite close, and who is dealing with the death of an associate and mentor (a few decades older than him).
As the doctor-patient bond deepens, the businessman becomes worried about losing Dr. Yalom also, a loss he fears he might not be able to deal with. As a reader, I found it moving, though for Yalom, it served as an unpleasant, unwelcome reminder of his own mortality.
The clock ticks for everyone.
The book takes its title from a Marcus Aurelius quote,
All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral - both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.
I found it very moving, especially the last sentence. No one and nowhere.It's paralysing and freeing at the same time. In the same phrase, a reminder that life is worth enjoying, for it is but brief, but also that whatever torment you're enduring is transitory.
Oddly, Nick Cave's "Where the Wild Roses Grow" gives me the same feeling. It's depressing, yes, but it's also deeply liberating. One day you'll walk down to the river, and it'll be so simple.
***
Phew. Who woulda thought that was brewing in my mind. I just set out to take some rose pictures, since I couldn't focus on work. I certainly didn't intend on rambling. But there you are. How's your Sunday going?
...Almost forgot. How else to end this?
