Growth: The Physics of Aging

A man walks through a store with his child tucked safely in his arm. The child leans over and grabs indiscriminately at passing products. The colors and shapes captivate her. The father keeps his child at a distance from her tempters. He moves with purpose past these possibilities back to the area of the store where the product his family needs is located. The father picks up the related products and grabs at the price tags. Cost per ounce, percentage of active ingredients--the numbers captivate him. He selects the winning competitor after comparing the potency in his mind.

Watch this sequence of events--or any other one involving parents and their offspring. Think that only some twenty years hence the same sort of event may be played out again, only the person who was in the role of the child may being the one playing the role of the parent. What is the link between children and adults? How many links are there between the two and how many lie severed on the floor between them?

Difficult questions need to be meticulously analyzed to be answered: examine the pieces separately, gain an understanding of them, and then a person can put forth a solution.

Vision is an immediate means of examination. People see in pictures, a series of fluidly changing images. Sight is always framed by a perimeter which gives every waking perception a limited dimension. The scale is amenable to human consumption. Is it any wonder that people often think in images as well? Pictorial thinking is manageable--like playing a game. There are boundaries and easily defined relations between the aspects of the image (i.e., the rules of a game). With the aid of pictorial thinking--a simple metaphor for an elaborate subject--something that was big is made small and what was confusing is now understood. A person paints a picture of something profound in life, shows it to his audience, and can now say, "There, I have made the big small for you." The artist has served his audience and releases his authority over his creation when he publicizes it. The audience is free to consider the work, critique it, leave it behind, or order a print.

Picture: Elevators

I take up my thought brush and paint thusly for you, my dear audience. The lives of people are like a set of adjacent elevators: as one elevator drops, the strain on the cord causes the other elevator to rise. One elevator is pure potential. One elevator is actuality--is being. Thus, when a person is conceived the actuality elevator is on the ground floor. Never can it go lower. The potential elevator is at the top of the building. Never can it go higher.

The little one, our exemplary individual, begins within the potential elevator. She can be anything at all. Potential is pristine, free from the taint of error. It is perfect in its vacuity. Naturally, the audience (I presume) thinks of the best of possibilities--the lawyer, the doctor, the president! Oh! Hope of hopes--what if she could be the leader of the free world? Time will tell.

The elevators operate on a time schedule. As the days go by, the potential elevator drops and the little one develops. Like grains of sand, the little one trickles into the elevator of actuality. Reality is defiant, stand-offish, proud of its dimensions and girth. It is noble in its density. The individual becomes something real and thorough, something fleshed out. She comes down to earth. The child learns a certain language, grows to a certain height, sees certain things, and so on. The actuality elevator rises as she ages. She becomes perhaps a student, a lover, a parent of her own. At some point the elevators meet. For a tenuous moment they are equal. The person whose life is pictured by the set of elevators now is fairly divided between the two. An instant later, disequilibrium returns. Now, more of her leaves the potential elevator and steps aboard the actual one. She is now ready to be more actual than potential. With the next moment, the tragedy comes--she realizes that the more she becomes, the less she can be! Oh! Terror of terrors--what if she has become the wrong sort of thing? The audience worries about the worst of possibilities--to be a failure, a vagrant, a disgrace. Whatever she is, it is impossible to change course. The elevators only move in one direction as time only moves forward. She becomes tired; her body aches. The prospect of deviating from habit or searching beyond the familiar confines distress her. Downward plunges what the person can become as who she actually is rises higher and higher. If the mistakes are too many or too great, the image is eerily reminiscent of an execution. The height kills. But if the triumphs have piled up, the image is of a catapult. The load is delivered unto the heavens. When she reaches the top, at the end of her life, the doors open, the cord is severed, and what was rushes to earth in a race to become nothing.

The audience wonders, what floor has she reached? Did she walk out? Is the ride simply over?

As the artist, I have the luxury of being coy. I can refrain from expanding upon my work and drawing out implications I think would infringe upon the responsibilities of the audience. I will say, though, that here I have painted a picture of life that is principally defined by time. In this way, childhood and adulthood are opposed. The contents of the elevators are inversely proportional. A person becomes less like a child the more like an adult he becomes. There is truth in this, is there not? One may look at life through time like a lens. Then the link between childhood and adulthood is a loose one because one has stepped outside of a life to look at a life.

Potentiality, with childhood as its representative, is the antithesis to actuality, with adulthood as its representative. Potentiality is open because it is empty. The distinction between potentiality and nothing is that we expect the former to become something else whereas we expect the latter to remain the same, to remain nothing. There is something there when we consider potentiality, however undeveloped. We press the raw material into molds or press stamps onto it. Now, it is or contains something else, it is formed. Actuality is binding because it is full. It resists alteration because of its structure, though it too can be undone.

This picture is weighty, is it not? Does it not saddle you down? It adds a great, painful, anxiety-inducing gravity to all of one's time because it paints imprisonment as so inescapable. Life is a process of binding. Being bound is what makes life like a gamble, for once the bet has been placed (i.e., the choice made) there is always a record of it and a consequential reckoning. Once a person has gambled wrongly, it impoverishes him. He takes that err with him in the form of an empty pocket, whether or not he remembers why he is poor. He never escapes it. He wriggles on the pin of failure. It is as though all moments of time impale a person and fix them at that point. Could it be that all these frozen people are what push the elevator of actuality downwards--that keep one from rising higher and faster? What heights could a person attain, how tall would the building of his life be, if not for all these instantaneous duplications! Is it possible that all the people a person has been are pinned onto this latest person? Oh how the woman now is different than the baby she was--that little balloon so scantly adorned!

Do not despair. We are looking out from time and time is ambivalent in the abstract. A person might just as easily be lifted up by her becoming. It is after all the natural motion of the elevator of becoming to move upwards. In potentiality there is freedom. What if a child took the advice of a beneficent mentor and developed a talent for piano instead of listening to his friends encourage him to vandalize? How many times does a person, going upwards, have the opportunity to become something they would approve of in quiet reflection--away from peers? Yes, life is a process of trial and error, of learning the truth of things from within them after assessing the truth of them from without them. So long as there is some depth for the potential elevator to descend into, there is still hope. Would it not be enough for a person to renege on her shameful missteps just prior to the door opening? Could she not shed those copies of herself that constrained her? In ways yes and in ways no, but if I elaborated I would be leaving my picture behind and moving somewhere else.

Impartial

Who are we to ask for guidance if we become disoriented and need to know where to go next? Let us set aside the suggestions of people. Their judgments are fraught with mistakes and rarely are preferable to our own judgments. What about old mother nature? She is well liked. We laud her for her impartiality--how she never discriminates. (Discrimination is unnatural, after all.) She tolerates everyone equally. Perhaps she is the fount of knowledge we are looking for. Ought we model ourselves off her posture? I have seen many people knock at her door. When she answers, what does she say? What fables does she teach us with?

A bear takes a wrong step and lands in a trap. His foot is crushed; his hide is punctured. Writhing in pain, what does he do? He takes to gnawing off the effected limb. Moral: Live at all costs.

Ought we be like the bear? No. Life is good. It is the most basic good. But should we live at all costs? All? No, no. One loses life trying so hard to keep it. The bear dies hemorrhaging.

A wolf takes a wrong step and lands in a rut. His leg is broken; his stride is undone. Writhing in pain, what does he do? He takes to limping off alone. He refuses assistance. If a helpful human came to set the leg straight, she would be bitten. Moral: Vulnerability is death.

Ought we be like the wolf? No. Death is bad. It is the most basic bad. But does vulnerability entail death? Entail? No, no. One gains life by permitting help. The wolf dies starving.

To live at all costs pits individuals in a mortal competition. Vulnerability is death pits individuals in a mortal competition. The impartiality in nature is a direct cause of confrontation amongst her children. Without the striations partiality--some individuals being embraced, others being confronted, and others being ignored--there is only homogeneous relating. Only the brutest facts are consequential--that one eats and reproduces. These facts constrain within the fixed limits of natural scarcity. One's eating takes away from another's; one's reproducing takes away from another's. The option is posed: either draw daggers or take leave. Fight or flight. There is no relating here; there is no cohabitation or dwelling. Is this any way for humans to operate?

I anticipate your objections. You will come at me and say, "You have gone too far. The bees--they cooperate! Lionesses carry their cubs in their mouths. Some birds mate for life. In nature, there is special treatment amongst some species." And to you I say: Yes. Quite right. I never said that mother nature never had good advice. She is alive and so she must have some good in her. One cannot exist without containing some good. My point is principally that those who rap on her door exclusively are doomed because she will sooner or later sell them down the river. And no, she certainly never meant to. It was the inquirers' fault for going to the well too many times.

We have observed how impartiality leads to inhumanity. If we heed mother nature's advice, the same results follow. One need look no further to see this than one's local instantiations of bureaucracy. One becomes abstracted and is referenced by a series of numbers. The end is not compassion, but collation. "We want to treat you all the same," says the bureaucracy. "Do not blame me. It is out of my control," replies the bureaucrat to your pleading. There is no place for specificity within bureaucracy. There are only greater and lesser generalities. Life is reduced to a flow chart, to a logical system of if-then statements. All of its agents are blameless--they only follow rules.

In this way, nature and artifice relate. They are perfectly devoid of intention and thus are innocent. (Guilt is, after all, unnatural.) We can scoop up the indiscriminate soil of nature and plant in it the seeds of our industry. What flowers grow? The delightfully ambivalent blooms of technology. The guillotine is impartial. Why? Because it harnesses nature. Gravity pulls the blade down upon all presented necks. And before you interrupt me, I can hear your thoughts already. Yes, yes. The wheelchair is impartial, too. Have you already forgotten my point?

To treat every individual as an individual, as a unique being within a unique context--how joyfully unnatural!

Fallen

(For an newer draft of this story, click here.)

The trees stood proudly about Roger Frost like soldiers presenting for inspection. If not for the light shooting through the little holes in the canopy, the glow of green emanating from the leaves would have made the time of day obvious. The scenery was tinted like light shined through an emerald. He deftly maneuvered between the trees without taking notice of their stances. It was nearly noon and Roger had already traversed ten brisk miles that day. He felt happy hiking with his home on his back.

Being in the wilderness pleased Roger. It tapped into the wellspring of contentment he had in being a simple man. Simplicity for Roger meant detachment from the frivolous trappings of life. He had become accustomed to owning little and learned to like it. When at home by himself, he often imagined what life would be like should a sudden catastrophe force humanity to live without the aid of technology. He fancied himself a survivor, someone who could adapt quickly and preserve himself even in dire situations. While everyone else would be running around crying and pulling their hair out, Roger would be rubbing sticks together with a smirk on his face. He would offer a neighbor a piece of cooked game and go on to be the one to organize a communal farm. He would humbly put human affairs back on their proper track.

Though it was early spring, the ground beneath Roger's feet had the familiar mush of ever-decomposing leaves. After absorbing a light morning sprinkle, the trail was slick. Roger used his worn walking stick to maintain equilibrium when the wet earth tried to induce him to do otherwise. All was silent except for swishing of his persistent pace and the huffs of his rhythmic breathing. Occasionally, he heard the crackle of a squirrel bounding through vines and saplings. The only sensation that interrupted his thoughts was the sporadic tug of undone spiderwebs draped upon his neck and face. A pinprick of guilt dripped within him for ruining the labor the tiny spinsters.

Nature had not always been his element. As a child, Roger was a homebody. He spent much of his adolescence under the watchful eye of his mother. Such a thorough hypochondriac was she that she channeled her overflowing sickness onto her only child. He was kept in his room for fear of contracting a malady from his suspicious peers or harming himself in his thorny surroundings. From his bedroom window, Roger loved nature as a courtier loved his fair maiden.

Trailing behind him strands of silken nets, his gaze was fixed on the ground shortly in front of his feet. He was preoccupied by the hazards along the trail. Although less nimble than he was in his youth, Roger knew well the ways of stable movements. Without remaining alert and compensating for the scattered rocks and roots, he would crash to the ground. The added weight of his supplies ensured he would be torn open by a fall. He appreciated how in nature nothing laughed when a person tripped. The sound in the forest before and after a tumble was the same. The natural world took no notice.

For all of its thorns and inhumanity, the natural world seemed preferable to the constructed one. The constructed one always seemed to fall short of its aspirations, while the natural one never publicized aspirations and thus never failed. Roger's childhood home was depressing for all of its disrepair. The shabbiness was a drain on its inhabitants. The doors always squeaked. The paint peeled. Drafts were common in the winter and leaks in the spring. One could not help but feel dilapidated by association to the ragged lodging. From inside the Frost house, the outdoors seemed glorious. He spent his youth daydreaming. Roger frequently pictured himself exploring the woods from behind his sweating bedroom window.

Roger took notice of the natural world. There was a subtle acrid smell in the air that always accompanied rain in the woods. Decomposition was being encouraged by the same water that was also nourishing roots. In the middle of observing how the odor reminded him of ones he had smelt in public restrooms, Roger recognized he did not feel well. Nausea had creepily begun to stir in his belly. Thinking he may be on his way to dehydration, he paused on a mossy stump to slake his thirst. He drank the tepid water in gulps and panted after holding his breath. He rifled into his pack for the bag of nuts he had brought. The salty crunch was disagreeable to his taste. He frowned and swallowed them down in haste. Roger ran his tongue around the interior of his mouth to clear away the remnants of almonds. He looked off into the distance and became enamored by the sight of doe. She was serenely grazing on sprouts--dropping her head down, lifting it to listen, and dropping it again. Roger lost himself in the vision of the animal. He was brought back to his affliction by the abrupt flicker of its tail.

Roger did not realize the exceptional decay of his surroundings until he went off to school. In kindergarten, he was taught of his impoverishment. He was ridiculed for his tattered clothes and belittled about his disreputable abode. Apparently, his family had developed a reputation in his all-too-small town. His plump, glowing teacher did what she could to mitigate the influence of his peers. She injected him with platitudes about the importance of invisible values--that it was what was on the inside that counted. Roger numbly wondered to whom it counted. He was immune to her kind encouragement and took heart from the plants outside his home instead. At times the trees and shrubs are bare, but they always revive. They grow and become more haughty. For all of the tenacious heckling he received, Roger refused to feel guilty for something that was to him as natural as autumn.

Shaken to attention, he resumed his task. With one last gulp swallowed, Roger grunted his way back to a walking stance. Feeling for the netted pocket and finding it, he slid the bottle into its place. His throbbing feet pushed against the interior of his tattered boots. The seams of faded thread began giving way years ago, but for all their use they never completely gave way. After succumbing to wrinkles and puckers on every step, they always sprang back to shape with every stride. He hiked onwards with a tighter calloused grip on his walking stick.

Inspired by nature, Roger embraced his condition. Instead of lamenting the relative poverty of his family, he took it as a season. He was going to prove to himself--not his classmates--that he could overcome his privations and thrive in an extended summer of vitality. Overcoming to Roger did not mean scrambling to fill the bare spots but embellishing further the areas in the self that were already adorned. If he was not wealthy, so be it. He was full of life. He had the power to alter his surroundings. As soon as his mother was distracted, he expended all of his energy as often as he could in spasms of revolt. He was fueled by spite towards the injustice of his situation. He lived to destroy barriers. He laughed at worldly trials and sought out difficulty. He thumbed his nose at suffering. So thoroughly had he treasured pain that he started to feel himself invincible.

His steps became less rapid than they were earlier in the day. He had difficulty blocking out the sensations bubbling in his abdomen. Roger's pain began to localize in the right side of his lower back. He tried to reassure himself that he was experiencing the usual cramping that occurred in the midst of backpacking. He pushed on and concentrated on his path. In most areas, it was only distinguishable by a thin ribbon of muddier soil. The leaves down the center of the trail were more trodden and thus less distinguishable than those on the periphery. The difference between being lost and on track was a preponderance of darker rather than lighter brown. He appreciated how singularly disinterested in humanity nature was. She offered no sign posts on her own. She showed no partiality; she did not play favorites. Trails had to be blazed or else one would wander aimlessly.

Roger aged from being an audacious teenager to a meek man in the span of a weekend. Roger's mother became more lethargic as wrinkles draped more heavily upon her face. As a consequence, her son was afforded greater liberty. He would escape his home whenever her guard was down. Roger set goals for his adventures of increasing extremity. First, he wanted to spend a night alone outdoors. Next, he wanted to hike to a river twenty miles away. He was intoxicated by his freedom. Roger was enraptured by action. He would push over rotting tree trunks and kick mushrooms. Chipmunks scurried at the sound of his cathartic grunts. The apex of his expeditions was a fifty mile trek with nothing but a knife, compass, map, blanket, and two pounds of deer jerky. He was seeking to find his limit. Roger wanted to be independent; he wanted to be sufficient unto himself. He wanted to be separate from the weights the hung on him--the truths about himself that were out of his control. He was intolerant of being boxed in. In preparation, Roger studied books on local vegetation and manuals on hunting. At the end of his greatest mission was a feat of immense daring. Old locals liked to tell stories in the town bar of a thirty-five foot plateau above a local lake that had since been cordoned off due to frequent injuries. Having a notion of the coordinates of the site, Roger struck out to conquer his part of the world early one Saturday morning.

The canopy shielded Roger from the afternoon sun. Nevertheless, he began sweating profusely. Steps were more laborious. He appeared like a wounded animal. His stride contained a noticeable limp that favored his right side. He paused to close his eyes and heard the rustle of a breeze. Mercifully cool wind tickled his neck. He let his head drop until his chin touched his sternum. He gulped air like water trying to calm himself. When the bouquet of decomposition reentered his nose, a geyser of vomit erupted upwards. The violence of his reaction surprised him. He hunched over dripping with his face to the ground in disbelief. He spat to cleanse his pallet and rubbed his right side with his right hand. Concern began to leak into him mind. Finding a nearby stump, Roger sat again. He fumbled for his water bottle. He noticed the disagreeable taste of the iodized water more acutely than before. He suppressed the desire to purge once more. He had no appetite and his energy levels were diminished. He focused on the glossy black ants milling between his boots. Some toted white granules of an unknown substance in their mandibles. They seemed directionless, walking and turning at random times. Where were their trails? Closing his eyes helped him suppress his mounting misery. He put all of his attention into his ears and listened to the leaves flicker. Roger lost track of time. Although it was barely dusk, Roger desperately wanted to sleep. He beckoned to unconsciousness as his saving grace. He held out hope that the next day would bring with it renewed health. He eased his oppressive backpack off his shoulders and let it tip over. His arms felt leaden. He thought of how he had forgotten old lessons and began to repent.

It took him fourteen hours of weaving between tree limbs and plodding through undergrowth to get to the makeshift fence that blocked the cliff. Roger slung his pack off his shoulder and let it tip over. He stamped down the chicken wire with his boot and approached the edge. Roger peered over it. His head spun with the sight of the chasm. The slope of the rock face was carved by skillful use of dynamite prior to the quarry being flooded. He retreated and scanned the periphery. The sky was billowing with clouds like smoke against the cobalt blue of dusk. The landscape looked surreal: dense forest butted up against a barren crater. A path that had been cleared for the transportation of minerals was in nature's reclamation process. The individual hickories and oaks looked melancholy in their singular insignificance. Roger felt his own insignificance complemented. He judged himself a wild thread woven into the tapestry of the wilderness. Before him was the gauntlet of death. Fear thrilled Roger. Adrenaline introduced a new lightness into his joints. He was primed to fling himself into the crater. After a deep inhalation, he rushed forward with the frenzy of youth and fell with the weight of pride.

The scent of pine filled Roger's nose as he entered a thicket of coniferous trees. His feet reveled in the relief the discarded needles offered in their carpet-like plushness. The increased comfort only made his nausea more distinct. A bead of sweat trickled into an eye, causing him to blink. Time had slowed to the pace of the sap trickling out of sores on the trunks about him. He wanted to be still. He fell to his knees, smashing scurrying insects in the process.

Just prior to Roger's leap, his right boot found a pocket of loose rock. The gravel shifted with his weight and absorbed a crucial part of his energy. As Roger flew forward and began to fall, he realized we would come up short. The queasiness that accompanies a great drop was multiplied by his terror. An embankment below was quickly approaching. He had time to regret his idiocy before the impact. After two futile kicks into the air, he struck the outcropping. The muffled sound hardly interrupted the quiet evening. He fell forward, breaking bones and losing consciousness. A crow flying overhead bore witness to Roger's misguided courageousness. He was ejected from the womb of his concussion onto the harsh bank of the lake. A sensation of coolness was the first memory Roger had after his plummet. So close was he to his target that his hair had draped into the cold, still water. It was thoroughly dark outside. At first he could discern nothing of the extent of his injuries. Pain reverberated throughout his body. He lay sobbing in a contorted heap. The chat he fell into kept the impact from being fatal, but lacerated his skin extensively. Roger could not manage to get to his feet. His legs were not working properly. Drowning in a pool of distress, his mind was not fully functional either.

Roger began to whimper aloud as he clutched his abdomen. The pressure building in his side was getting the best of him. For the first time, he began feeling anxious. He had not seen another man or woman for days. Death was before him again. Far from home and far from help, thoughts of helplessness began sparking into his mind. He snuffed them out as best he could, knowing he needed to remained focused at returning to the trail head. As he was thinking of how idiotic he had been to strike out alone and unknown into the woods, the pressure was released with a pop. Roger opened his eyes to see his denim-covered knees crumpling pine needles. Was he cured? He felt suspiciously relieved. Filled with gratitude, he released his concentration and allowed himself to rest.

Sprawled on the bank, he thought the thoughts of a dying man. Remorse welled within him. Roger previously was certain he was ready to battle with nothingness; he thought he could free himself by leaping into the abyss. Facing mortality would let him become more than human. Now, his fragility screamed through his nerves. He was neither alive nor dead but on his way from one to the other. Tears dropped onto the rocks of the bank as unanswered questions cascaded through his mind. What had happened to his strength? Why was he dying now? Was he to fade away and become absorbed unbeknownst to anyone? Where was he to file his complaints against reality? In his state of complete helplessness he was deserted with his dread. He could not bear the weight of life on his own and neither could nature. Roger had been alone too long. His solitary confinement was self-inflicted, brought on by hubris. He needed a companion. He knew now that there was no kinship with the universe; there was no brotherhood with impersonal matter.

The external world showed no sympathy with the internal world. Planets twinkled and stars lit up the clear night sky. He tipped over, exhausted. In a fetal position, Roger tried to sleep. Being immobile felt slightly better than moving, but his discomfort had returned in a new guise and kept him awake. He imagined what his insides looked like, what sort of mortal stew was brewing within him. With shaky fingers in the morning, Roger tried to shovel the last of his almonds into his mouth. Before he could bring his jaws together, his mouth rejected the intrusion. He convulsed in a fit of dry heaves. Roger suspected his organs were shutting down. The release he felt was merciful, but not indicative of recovery. He thought it strange that his biological defenses would lead to death's victory. Every individual function was suspending itself to prevent damage spreading to other functions. Taken together, the totality of his body was killing itself in an attempt to save itself. How was it that the body chose now to die after he had spent so long in trying to live?

There was nothing more to do. Life was leaving him as involuntarily as it entered him. Roger's blood mingled with the chalky white rocks. On the shore of an artificial lake, he awaited his end. There was only a choice to make: repent and resign to his limitations or refuse and revolt. He had attempted to spurn the world with singularity, but now knew he had gone too far. The wisdom imparted by suffering allowed him to discern between genuine and false freedom. If this was what it took to stop him from running, so be it. He passed out of consciousness hoping he would wake again. The whir of a motor jolted him. A retiree came noticed a motionless figure while he was trolling for bass that had been introduced to the lake years earlier. He pulled Roger into his boat, and later up the shore and into his truck. They sped to the nearest hospital, along fifty miles of painfully jostling country roads. Technology in the hands of doctors saved his life. Roger's body healed together with his spirit.

The natural world he adored as a boy was superseded by the God he called upon that desperate night. Both were wonderful for the way their superficial ambivalence masked a deep-seated, complex goodness. Rain falls on the just and unjust alike; a loving God allows the innocent to hurt. Neither forgot; both were always working to incorporate everything. Unlike nature, God did not operate by cycles. To live forever, one had to die twice; to die forever, one had to die once. Either way, a person never returned. Roger had been partially correct. The world ought to be spurned, but not completely and not by beating it at its own game. The human and inhuman world were irreparably heterogeneous, containing good and evil, life and death. Purity could not be had by immersing oneself in either world. Everyone has a sense of the fundamental ambiguities mixed throughout each. Roger was right not to succumb to the onslaught of his peers who were impoverished in a different way. He erred leaping for his own salvation. One drowns as surely in lakes as in tears. One needs to find other streams to be renewed in.

Roger, confronted by mortality again, refused to despair. His thoughts became focused with excitement. He prayed to God that He existed. He needed God to exist. He knew the only necessity in life was necessity itself. People need something fixed and changeless. It is why they were quick to look to laws and definitions. Roger wanted the law. He wanted to be held accountable. More than that, he simply wanted to be held together. He could not endure the thought of vanishing into nothingness. If he was to never exit the wilderness again, how could he ever be said to exist? Nature would not remember. She would devour him with her minions and bury him with her sediments. The memories of those he met in life would scarcely contain a note on him. Roger rejected the possibility. He was filled with hope at the possibility of an enduring record keeper. He prayed to God to give him faith as he lost his equilibrium.

Fallen, Roger terribly wanted to be warm. Turning his dizzy head and lifting his eyes, he could see an opening in the woods on the horizon. The golden glow of pure daylight enticed him. He dug his fingers into the moist soil and pulled himself through the remnants of his stomach. His writhing movements were awkward but effective. He crossed the terrain by inches rather than feet, but crossed it all the same. For the first time in hours, he forgot about how awful he felt. He thought only of the heated honey of sunlight being poured over him at the end of his toil. Strain was not a lamentable state to Roger. It was the state of living, and he was glad to feel alive. Twigs and the shells of nuts clawed at his skin and ripped his clothes as he forced himself over them.

After draining the last of his pool of energy, he reached the clearing. He splayed out enervated on the glade of igneous rocks that were impervious to plant life. As Roger lay dying, he wondered what his body looked like to an eagle. It seemed to be the perspective nature always took on humanity. He was a fleck of compressed carbon and water. He was imprisoned within the consuming forest. He swore he felt a compassionate warden comfort him with a blanket of light. He strained to see, but the muscles in Roger's neck refused to obey his will. His head dropped onto a pillow of lichen-covered granite. Orange-red seeped through his eyelids like light shone through amber. He no longer felt pain; he was done dying. He only felt tired. He released himself from his body.

Roger, who had closed his eyes moments before, exhaled and died again.