103 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
103 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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tags:
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- destiny/uncertain
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- status/draft
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- type/media/poetry
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- topic/hobbies/poetry
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title: when i die
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changelog:
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2025-10-21: v1 draft and initial commentary
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---
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# when i die
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## Version 1
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```verse
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when i die
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don't put me in a box
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to become an inch of human soup
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when i die
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don't burn my flesh to ash
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and waste what i have left to give
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when i die
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leave me to rest on the forest floor
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to feed the foxes and fungi
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and when you return
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to tell me how you've been
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and how you meant to come back sooner
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you'll find me there
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a special piece that remained
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waiting for your visit
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this is my sincere request and express consent:
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please make a xylophone from my ribcage
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when i die
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```
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### Commentary
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I wrote this at about 2025-10-21 04:00
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when I couldn't sleep.
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#### Theme
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At the time I thought the poem was very funny:
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it starts out morbid and death-negative,
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then becomes touching,
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then a sharp pivot to grotesque and absurd.
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I think now though
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there's something to the ribcage xylophone metaphor:
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##### A Xylophone Made from My Ribcage
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The quality (musical or otherwise)
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of a xylophone made of one's bones
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is independent of the quality of their character
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or their worth as a person.
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To desire for one's bones to be _made_ useful in such a manner,
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in rejection of traditional memorial,
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is to believe that commodity value of one's parts
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exceeds the value of the damage treating them as such
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would do to one's memory.
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The speaker's request at first sounds like
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they're letting the reader off easy:
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"don't bother with burial or cremation,
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just toss me in the woods",
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but the convenience is negated by their second request,
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a task that would be so ethically difficult
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(not to mention technically difficult)
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as to be impossible for almost all people.
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To make the speaker's request
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is to make it the responsibility of one's descendants
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to make up for one's own failure to live a meaningful life,
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and to do so while acting as if giving them a gift.
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##### Obsession with Death
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Repetition of "when i die",
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use of dysphemism ("inch of human soup"),
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and the lack of horror for their request,
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suggests that the speaker is obsessed with death.
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The speaker is likely not working to mitigate their regret
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while they still have life to live.
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### Notes for V2
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Further express the speaker's ignorance and dismissal
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of the difficulty of their requests.
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```verse
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when i die
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==just== leave me to rest on the forest floor
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to feed the foxes and fungi
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```
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