Living / Dying

The coral tree outside my window is thick with green sleeves. The red conical blossoms are gone. They had their six weeks of fame with throats open wide and nectar dripping. Sometime in June they vanished, replaced by poisonous pods. Fortunately, the hummingbirds know when to poke their elongated snouts in for a drink and when to abstain.

At the same time large green leaves have been roused from their slumber, waking into verdant wakefulness. As throughout all life, it’s a matter of, Hello, I must be going. The curtain goes down at the same time as the curtain goes up. I know the feeling.

Like Schrodinger’s cat, alive and dead at once, we are in both the maternity room and intensive care. On a societal level, the death of democracy is much more in evidence than anything nascent. Yet while they are killing us (not so) softly with their song, I’m listening hard for the start of something big.

Meanwhile our planet begs for remedial care. We are losing over one hundred species a day according to some computer models while over 200,000 people join the human race daily. Make room for an additional two billion by 2050.

Schrodinger’s cat was simply part of a thought experiment set out to challenge Einstein (of all people) and demonstrate a fallacy of quantum mechanics. If this or any creature were confined in a box bombarded by electrons or any other lethal substance there is a point where it might be said to be both alive and dead, yet on observation this cannot be true. Beyond this oversimplification I get a brain ache. But the concept fascinates me at least metaphorically.

In the course of an ordinary day, living/dying happens, unremarked upon. Each day we may die a little and the next day, revive a little. I was recently told how, in conversation between two women, one became radiant from within as if being seen for the first time. New life, emergent, is no small thing.

 I take my cue from that tree busy making chlorophyll for green leaves and their day in the sun while those operatic flowers are hitting their high notes of the season with all corpuscles bursting, divas that they are.