The Virtual Rambler

Number fifteen: 21^st July 2011

The Afterlife

In medical textbooks , the afterlife is no more than a body’s dispersion into its constituent elements. Just as the energies that build them are incessantly changing form , all organisms are in constant flux , re-cycled in that process of transubstantiation illustrated by the Yorkshire anthem “On Ilkley Moor Bahtat”.⁽¹⁾ Projecting their wishful thinking into an endless future , mortal men have premised a variety of afterlives for the soul : reincarnation into a future animate being or (like anxious first-time holidaymakers abroad) , allocation on arrival into one of two zones. The low-budget end is reserved for the sinner. The heavenly luxury suite rewards the faithful and the righteous. God-botherers may anticipate an eternal Sunday in a rain-swept Snowdonia , with strict observance of the Sabbath’s strictures on entertainment. More lenient temperaments envisaged a plashing of fountains and streams in some celestial gardens where the elect are surrounded by dark-eyed houris. Several centuries’ worth of artistic endeavours to depict any sort of heaven proved unconvincing. Hell proved to be a more productive subject for mediaeval artists , particularly Bosch , whose triptych known as The Garden of Earthly Delights exhibits , to the modern sensibility , a nocturnal panel of fiendish torments among fires and monsters , after a central scene of naked crowds gallivanting about a lakeland landscape complete with Disneyland structures.

Fugitives in zombie films may be supplied with the ‘explanatory’ line “When there’s no more room in hell , the dead come to walk the earth.” In some ways the zombie idealises what many of the living opt for when they go on holiday - plenty of sleep , days punctuated by the regular need to feed , an occasional saunter through some historical ruins. The undead also present the grim doubt behind our need to repeat to ourselves how marvellous and exciting life is , for theirs is an afterlife we secretly believe may be our lot in the here and now : a pointless and exhausting struggle to lurch from one economic crisis to the next in a moribund culture of empty consumerism. Like the virtual rambler himself , the living dead are work-shy. A demographic in desperate need of self development programs and personal performance targets. Can we suggest a conference initiative for their strategic re-orientation , providing front-end valuations of behavioural progress and opportunities for back- stage decompression in a few feng-shui zones ? Guest speakers will include Alf Tupper ⁽²⁾ contemplating the panoramic absurdity of modern life , with its 6 o’clock cocktail shakers , air travel and fitted kitchens.

With darkness gathering around our second childhood , we’re invited on a one-way cruise back to the natural world. Our last gesture is the ability to die with good grace , to make that return without any talk of our spiritual destiny. Death is sustainable after all. It lasts forever. An old friend reads our valediction and let’s hope there's no mention of the resurrection. Cast-iron gates slam shut. Every second as the earth rotates , multitudes of other people and creatures of all kinds are giving up their lives. “Dearly beloved , as many as are gathered here together.” While our ancestors lie buried in their lonely churchyards , we have elected for a one-off stop at the crematorium. This change in our funeral habits indicates a deep transformation of the public psyche. Burials used to express an attachment to the soil of the homeland and the spirits that dwell within it , whereas cremations fuel flights from the earth , final escapes into nowhere. The notion of an individual afterlife so transparently fills the lack of our capacity to think of a world from which the thinker is absent that we ought to note that incapacity as part of the human condition and leave it at that. Our exit music plays over the speakers installed in the Chapel of Rest. No , its not Born To Run , nor is it My Way . Smoke curls up from the crematorium chimney and disperses into thin air as the audience are invited into a circle for a last Hokey-Cokey. You do the Hokey Cokey and you turn around , that’s what it’s all about.

Wig

⁽¹⁾ A popular folk song (probably of nineteenth century origin) in the Yorkshire dialect. The melody started as an earlier hymn tune , now long forgotten in the U.K.

⁽²⁾ The Tough of the Track was a welder and “hard as nails” runner whose adventures appeared in boys’ comics for forty years. His staple diet was a take-away bag of fish and chips , which he would finish just before arriving at the track after the starting gun and , invariably , still beating his University rivals.

The Virtual Rambler

Number fifteen: 21st July 2011

The Afterlife

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Number fifteen: 21^st July 2011