Akira: Children of Light

I pondered a cemetery today. A cemetery of marble statues more elaborate than the stark grey tombs that dot America; the little rounded monuments or black placards lining a field in perfectly symmetrical rows. These Grecian graves of the well-to-do and famous and notorious were raised; rectangular, looming, imposing. Brilliant in the sun. Quiet as midnight. Great statues of the dead and their accompanying angels posed against the unmoving palm plants. A few scattered firs shed needles onto the great white slabs, peppering the tombs and making it dark with rot. Here and there flowers wilted in various stages of decay.

I thought about the dead and how most who die dwindle into nothingness. Their memories fall to those who loved them and when those people disappear, so do the remnants of the previously deceased. Within a generation or two, there is nothing but the present. The past, of which the dead were a part, has faded to blue. The stress and joy and beauty and strife of their singular life has bled into the black branches of the trees now surrounding their graves.

And I asked myself: what might make me content with death?

Plodding the path of the cemetery, I discovered the condition. Death did not frighten and, with enough thought, became a tame kitten. A sweet purring notion, encouraging and warm. Death is inevitable. Life stops. And I do not need an afterlife or a beautiful reward to validate the life I lead. I am content to feed on the beauty of the world. And when I ave died, all I want is to leave behind knowledge. Some great knowledge. Some perfect idea, unique to me, that will set fire within someone--as a handful of individuals have within me--and push them into a life of endless learning and appreciation. Of ceaseless questioning and contentment in the Now.

If I can inspire one, then I will have made my proper mark on this world. I don't need children--I hate children and I like the way my body looks without them--and those monsters can easily go awry. Turn out wicked and wrong and it's all your fault in the end for what they fail at. My own failures are burden enough, thank you.

No, I just want to find someone. Someone with dry kindling, begging for the flame of curiosity. An insatiable soul, open to all the wonder I have found in this world and thirsty for what I so yearn to give. Someone who wants to know and will never stamp that desire, but build it, brandish it, and desire, too, in turn, to pass it on.

Bury me beside my Beloved, as I will be content to die if I can bring light unto one child.