(picture by Bjørn Venø)

I remember thinking
about the concept of dying at an early age. The thought came whilst I was strapped
to a reed car with black leather seats. A car that crashed in to a lorry when I
was three. Memories are strange they blend together
with dreams and different events forming a complete new substance
that is unreachable, just like the concept of death. I felt that I could touch
and understand it but the moment melted in my hands, running through the car
and forcing its way back in to the soil. It was as if I had a revelation that was
not mine, an understanding that was beyond me. Over the years the feeling of
almost understanding something incomprehensible has reoccurred several times, but it is the first event
that sits locked and distorted in my memory.

My family and I lived on a beautiful island on the west cost
of Norway. Where I often found my self in my own thoughts, sometimes I wonder
if I got lost there. We were sitting in the car on our way to a fishing port
that had the greatest range of shops. I was spending my time looking out of the
window captured by how fast everything close to me disappeared out of my view.
We had just left the first of two tunnels on our route when I was hit by a
strong feeling of peace. For a fraction of a second I felt that I new what death is and then it was just a forgotten memory
that gave soil to many questions. “Will I become someone or something I am not?
How will it feel not to be alive, not to be me anymore or that the person I am to
day will never think again? Will I know who I was? Will there be only darkness?
If so what will it feel like not to exist? ” That child who felt those thoughts
is for ever gone. He is not me, if what I have said about death is the
definition of it then I have died many tiny deaths, like drops of
water falling from a wet ceiling. The boy I was is only the seed that lead to
me, without him I would not be writing these words to day, just like I would
not have bean born if my parents had not met.

We hardly notice the metamorphosis from child to man, it is
a silent death. It is the death of love that can be painful even though it is
gradual. The difference is that there are two people involved; it is merely
another parting for the one who lost love gradually. Whilst the other feels
that an important part of his body has suddenly died. We strive to prevent this
by looking for a person who can for ever more walk with us through life. But
there is only a lucky few who find such a partner. The rest of us can look at
them with envy and say: “In truth we are born alone, live alone and die alone.”
Within our own minds that is, nonetheless it is a thought which will pull us
further in to despair. Because we need to believe that we are not alone even in
our minds. I imagine that I sound horribly cynical to you? Maybe it is because
I just woke up from a dream about a lost love.

I wonder, is it only when things happen suddenly we feel overwhelming
pain and loss. Just think of al the friends that have left your life when you
moved away or got a new job. You consulted yourself that you will see them again
and re live the times you had. But you have left their lives, you no longer get
to progress and develop together. You have started on your own path independent
of theirs. When you met again it will be as different people celebrating the
past.

Was the knowledge of death only that of change? But death of
the body is also change; the problem with death is that we do not know how
great the change is. Death can be the same as growing up from a boy to a man or
it can be less, we just do not know. Although I believe that one can access
that knowledge, but not with intellect or rationality, I think it is through
our feelings. It is ignorant to maintain that only rationality can give
answers. I think that feelings can hold the same amount of certainty and uncertainty
as logic. To end this discussion before it grows; I shall state that it is only
time who can predict the future and show us the truth about death.

I do not believe that the knowledge I felt was about the
little deaths we experience in life. I think it was about the last breath of
our body. The feeling of total darkness and the slow transformation to mold. I have told you the thoughts I had right
after the feeling of certain knowledge. But they where only questions about death?
It was the answer to these questions I felt lingered in my mind. I could not
grasp the knowledge because I did not have the mind to understand it. With that
there aroused a feeling of being someone else looked away in me. Someone who can
understand such answers, a person who might not be me. He is locked away by my
limitations. I feel that he has so much creativity and wisdom that needs to get
out, but I have not the means to free him, nor to communicate what he wants to
say. He has a desire to reach out to everyone al at ones, but I can not get any
further then two steps at a time. I can only give distortions of his thoughts. Will
death be his realisation? Am I his prison? Or is he just my alter ego?

In the end I can just create, for I feel that is my destiny
and death will come with the greatest and most fearful journey that I will ever
embark on, but when or where only he knows.

Welcome to my secret page! At the moment it only contains
one story and two pictures, but more will come. This will grow to be completely
true; as long as time dos not stop.

First written: 25/09/2004 17:08