Wednesday, January 26, 2011

POST MORTEM

As per the dictionary definition, POST MORTEM means a medical examination of a dead body and /or an event , informally, a review or analysis of a finished event. In my personal experience , it seems to imply the latter. So much for any attempt to make this fictional or purely coincidental.
Post mortem means subjecting a previously living and breathing entity in your life, to a cold, objective, pedantic magnifying glass and dissecting its constituent elements into minute particles, until the moment of absolute, blessed insanity( which some call sanity) strikes , where all essence of this entity is lost.
Post mortem also means, eradicating any humane aspects to that entity, for the higher purpose of some perverted kind of catharsis, because after all knowing is fulfilling.( the sarcasm-ignorant are not meant for this writing). Add a few sprinkles of existential, futile, self-deprecating questions, a dash of never-ending insecurity about the temporality and uncertainty of anything anymore, and we have our very own recipe for self-destruction.
This entity may be a human body, or in most cases, a dead end relationship, hanging by a thin thread, needing some material desecration, since all emotional and philosophical ones fail to provide, what Rachel wittingly calls, "cllllllosssure".
" So what if he/she needs space, i mean its the 21st century, time is money, who needs a man/woman who actuallly wants to love me and is not confounded by mommy/daddy/commitent/bachelor issues?" Denial is everywhere, it precipitates the Post Mortem, just like evaporation precedes condensation.
Post Mortem is not so much about the dead, lifeless entity as it is about the examiner, his/her need for validation, the immensely important necessity for the futile knowledge, that "its wasn't all in vain, there had to be some 'productive' aspect to it'."
As i sit and think about the 'advantageous' hindsight, i wonder, does it help at all? Does knowing how things will eventually pan out change us from being our usual, neurotic, insecure, victimizing, melodramatic selves? No, nothing can prevent human beings from the gift/curse of the glorified 'assessment', or what us soon-to-be journalists would like to call, "deconstruction".
Grieving. Another big word used way too often, mostly inappropriately.Grieving is not cherishing your loved moments with this dead entity (i prefer HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED) and adopting the bourgeoise way of moving onto the next form of self-validation. Grieving is not about living every moment of life to the hilt in search for some previously denied nirvana. Grieving is also not writing a note about it on facebook.
Grieving is a painful process, of shouting, screeching, howling, till your insides want to jump out of your stomach, it means yelling to enlarge your trachea in order to allow some air back into your system, it is crying for hours till every ounce or drop of salt in your body is utilised and nothing is left but a deep sense of emptyness. And this emptyness,this vaccum, as P.B Shelley prophecied, provides the potential for some weird, twisted yet realistic kind of ritualistic filing up, where you know you'll never be the same again, feel the same again, but there is beauty in that.
Change and not Knowledge may be empowering.
Or not.

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