Head Dust


ERUCTED THOUGHTS, MIDDEN SIFTINGS, HETERONYMOUS DISJECTA.

THERE IS NO DEATH

There is no death. There is only loss. Death cannot be experienced; it is not a phenomenon. We postulate death from an observation of inanimate meat. We contrast our observation of inanimate meat with our memory of the prior animation of that meat. Our experience of the loss of animation of that meat is exactly that: an experience of loss. It is not an experience of death for there is no death. There is only loss. One’s own passing from a state of animated meat to a state of inanimate meat is not an experience: it is a loss of experience, a cessation of experience and nothing more. Death is not a force, it is not a state, it is not a process or a transition or a doorway. Death is not anything. There is no death.

Memory is that which makes us aware of loss. Memory is the residuum of loss. Memory concerns itself only with loss. Loss is constant and universal. Loss is time’s organ. The idea of death is the idea we have when memory loses the ability to conceive of further loss, when memory is unreplenished, when the possibility for loss is exhausted. What we call death is loss’s horizon. But there is no death. Beyond loss’s horizon memory itself begins to be lost. Death is nothing. There is only loss. Only forgetting persists beyond here.

IB-ANDERS VOVSER
Diary entry for 13 June 1932
Translated by Digory Trench, 2010