School of Death

Recall the School of Life you are automatically opted into. Imagine a School of Death. As is with the School of Life, we are all pupils, though we are enlisted at different times, or perhaps conscription is more apt. Who are its teachers? They change: the self, the lover when you jolt awake from another ghastly dream, the mirror, the edge of the waterfall, the child Ileia who cries at a broken flower, or a song - tame impala “when I’m quite on the other side know that I’m loving you…it’s all i do…”

There must be a specific school for the loss of mothers, no loss is the same. i am trying to find colleagues, comrades, i have siblings.

The interpretation is more important than the dream.

There is no opting out, the world becomes ghostly, there are holograms, traces, memories, prints, remains. Your wondering is your own weakness, your own scorn and doubts scare you from wondering any deeper.

A therapist is no teacher here, they list the usual things - acceptance, forgiveness, “she would want you to be happy”.

Is winter the school of death? Is the bottom of a waterfall where violence and rebirth coexists? Is the rotting petal? The pained look of disbelief in their eyes when the news is fresh, I have seen it.

When did receiving a phone call in the early hours become your worst fear? The first was Papaji, how she wailed on her bed in Sydney, how my father said “Papaji expired” - expired. How she wailed of sinning when we got the call for Biji. How she did not know she wouldn’t live as long as either of her parents, her elder siblings, her 13 year senior husband, how none of them know, how none of us knew. How we do not know. How can we attain knowledge at this School of death? Everything is happenstance here.

Recess is in dreams where I trace your face, your nose, the brow bones the luscious cheekbones, your lips, the neck, your perfect face in the background they’re muttering about 3 yrs and not preserving. Can my memory preserve? Without relying on the photographs, can the mind be diligent enough and for how long? I don’t want to let you down again.