lilyAquamarine“Have you ever thought about death?”
“Death?”
“That’s right, death. You said I am not like ordinary people. If there was just one thing I’d say that was true about. It is—I’m not afraid of death. People are funny, because of course, they don’t know anything about death.They never experienced it and knew it was something to fear, but they fear it instinctively. There’ve been countless times in my life when I thought I’d be better off death. That nothing could be worse than what was happening to me right then. At times like that...death looks sweet and peaceful, and unbearably enticing.”
“Ash.”
“‘...Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. It’s western summit is called by the Masai ‘Ngaje Ngai’, the ‘House of God’.
Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.’
That is from Hemingway’s The snows of Kilimanjaro. When I think of my own death—I try to picture that leopard’s carcass. Why did he come to those heights—for what? Did he lose his way chasing some prey, and wander into some spot he couldn’t escape from? Or was he looking for something else, climbing higher and higher until he used up all his strength and collapsed? I think about which way the carcass was facing... was he trying to get back down—or trying to climb higher? Either way, that leopard knew... that he would never be going back. “
2018-07-19 04:41:57 +0000