This was on Reddit first but this is absolutely absolutely worth the read.
AND it talks about poetry. All right, I'm won over.
Readers should know that the title "who by very slow decay" is a line from the Leonard Cohen song "Who by Fire" which is a spin on the Yom Kippur prayer speculating on the many ways that people will die: some by fire, some by water, some by slow decay. Fantastic article, ref. The author seems like an interesting fellow. Just emerged from the rabbit hole of hypertext that I discovered when I looked into the author.
Thank you for this; I was in the dark. Whenever anyone asks that 'fun' question "How do you want to die?" I tell them "Laughing." But my other stock answer is from the Rolling Stones: "I hope I die before I get old." The process he describes terrifies me and I should like to avoid it.Readers should know that
An entertaining read, and even funny which is no small feat given the subject matter. I particularly liked this paragraph My wife is a physician and she used to be a hospice worker. She maintains that end of life care in modern western medicine is needlessly wasteful (it's expensive to keep someone on all those machines and medications and in a hospital bed), cruel and impractical. It's amazing that we treat our pets with more dignity. Also, Emma Watson!Wittgenstein said that “if anyone ever wrote a book of ethics, that really was a book of ethics, it would destroy all the other books in the world with a bang.” I’m not really sure what he meant. But if anyone ever wrote a book of hospital poetry, that really was a book of hospital poetry…well, I don’t know what would happen, but I bet it would be loud and angry, and that it wouldn’t be put on shiny plaques on anybody’s walls, except maybe the same people who hang Hieronymous Bosch paintings on their walls.
Bosh = angry and loud -I get that.