a meditation on when death comes

There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.
― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

I am risk-averse. I hate to say a thing if it isn't true but I'll avoid even saying the true things if they get too close to what is raw, real, and risky.

I feel hungry for beauty and I seek it out in electronic images. Pictures of mountains, especially taken close-up, from the valley below, captivate me utterly. I almost get to the point of saying "I want to go there or to some similar place. I want to see that, to feel it." But I stop. Could I? Would I, really? Or would I find every reason to stay at home, sip my sweet milky tea, and scroll through images on a dead screen? The answer is the latter, every time. So no, no I do not want such beauty that badly.

I am drawn, moth-like, to the alchemy of romance, to the burning fire and passion of it. To think of wooing and being wooed tantalizes; to think of the dance enraptures. But would I really? Would I throw my heart into the crucible―all of it or else the magic will fail? Or would I coat myself in nacre and, from my untouchable prettiness, find fault with every would-be lover? The latter. Always the latter.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.   ―Mary Oliver, "When Death Comes"