HazeWasHere

“The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.”

“When we hung around, he was always happy. Like a normal person. He had a black sense of humor, same as me, and we both shared the love for splatter movies, silly cartoons and comic books. I remember him as a happy and very nice, very polite, person. But to strangers he was antisocial, so when other people met him, they thought he was strange because he didn’t look or talk to them at all. And when they talked to him sometimes, if he didn’t want to talk to them, he was just looking down at the floor. We had a lot of good times and we were laughing a lot.”

To die means to be capable of death as death. The animal perishes. It has death neither ahead of itself nor behind it. Death is the shrine of Nothing, that is, of that which in every respect is never something that merely exists, but which nevertheless presences, even as the mystery of Being itself. As the shrine of Nothing, death harbors within itself the presencing of Being. As the shrine of Nothing, death is the shelter of Being. We now call mortals mortals—not because their earthly life comes to an end, but because they are capable of death as death. Mortals are who they are, as mortals, present in the shelter of being. They are the presencing relation to Being as Being.