Fatally Human

And it's part of the way storytelling works. Your image of storytelling is around a campfire or around a fireplace, or maybe, you know, with a bedside lamp on. There's always a sense of a clearing of light and then just sort of darkness all around you; that's the nature of telling a story, that you're creating a little clearing

But then what happens at the end of life, in an ideal world, would be like what happens at the end of a book or a movie -- that that story is wound up, that it has some meaningful conclusion

Fatally human
We hover in the world
Fatal someone
We flounder in the dark
Take hold of another
Go mad in a moment
The soil and the wonder
Sway to the terror

Nothing is simple
But sometimes things are good
Fatally human
Joy and dirt and blood
Take hold of another
Go mad in a moment
The soil and the sutures
Sway to the terror

All of the lifetimes calling
Blood on the floor and birds on the ceiling
Hopeless and selfless, hopeless and selfish
Dusting a lamp that cries in the darkness

That's that one point where we should be allowed to forgive things that need forgiving, to close things that need closing, just to find a sense of authorship. And of course, what happens is the opposite, normally; that person becomes like a 'bit part', like a cameo

All of the lifetimes calling
Blood on the floor and birds on the ceiling
Hopeless and selfless, hopeless and selfish
Dusting a lamp that cries in the darkness

All of the lifetimes calling
Blood on the floor and birds on the ceiling
Hopeless and selfless, hopeless and selfish
Dusting a lamp that cries in the darkness