And another one

WILTED LEAVES ON THE TREE OF LIFE

While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.2

The idea would be to die young, as late as possible.

To die quietly and gracefully, embraced by the trees and the pond, the rustling leaves, as the day dies with me.

To die the way Lord Byron dies in Joseph-Denis Odevaere’s painting, framed by a classical landscape.

To die like Marcel Proust, safe in the knowledge that the diary has been written, that the work has been done.

“Nothing burns in the glass house,” wrote Paul Scheerbart for the frieze of Bruno Taut’s glass pavillion in Cologne in 1914. “There’s no need to have a hearth.” The Glass House will have a simple bar for a kitchen. Standing behind it, one will be able to see The Night by Giacometti as one prepares the final supper.

Einstein wrote that death is not an end, that our bodies “are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.” As I move from the desk I will put at the northern end of the west wall and lie down on the bed to view the never-ending drama of the world outside, I might see the leaves wilt away with me.

Shining, immaterial, translucent impressions. I will be suspended in space, floating in time. A perfect building for a perfect moment. “The harmful insect is not nice,” wrote Scheerbart, “it will never enter the Glass House.” There will be a kind of harmony: nature running its course yet being held in place by hard, transparent sheets of glass. Nature and reason. A synthesis.  

2 Leonardo da Vinci