The Stories, The Poems, and The Prose of Nadine Sellers

    From the time we are born, our cells aim for the compost pile; we fall off in the sheets, one dead atom at a time, to provide food for dust mites. We fall off in the shower, one hair at a time, for the drain bacteria to survive. We break down in increments, adding to the biomass; meat and bones for the great recycler. Shiva is doing some serious overtime; recycling dead bodies across the planet. Chaos is purging the masses randomly to feed the continuum, here and elsewhere.

    Whatever the rest of the world was doing today: I was simply arranging dead flowers in a wooden vase carved from a dead tree, stroking the dead fur on my fancy pillow and picking slivers of dead jerky from my teeth. I was transfixed by the television, trading emotional distance with corpses and maimed victims of another tsunami. A magazine, face up on the coffee table reminded me to support some troops in a dangerous war effort. Meanwhile these soldiers were obviously engaged in killing themselves and whosoever appeared threatening to someone's democratic idealism.

    A voice on the radio hails from Barbary to call for revenge against the elusive enemy who feels compelled to retaliate against their enemy's bombs. Friends are made and lost faster than in front of the prom night punch bowl. Radical vendetta litters the ground with moribund evidence.. Benevolent volunteers suffer among the suffering. While religions profit in these opportune times. Franchises come to the rescue, installing themselves in the obscure loopholes.

    Loss of any kind seems to stress an immature society. Dixieland fanfare aside, most modern funerary practices are imbued with the sense of first stage grief management; clearly arrested at anger or self pity stage. The sound of a twenty-one gun salute torments the birds and shocks the mourners. A mother hears the sound that killed her son no less than the ritual repetition. Twenty-one till death do us shred and rip apart; symbolism tears the very roots of peace. Funeral practices provide the living with a liminal sense of closure, so close the lid, dispose and dispense for the living in single grief or group comfort. And live well.

    As for myself, I silently grieve for loveless children who unwittingly rip the lives of the living asunder. I mourn for the carefree youth in embattled countries; those who could have had a positive impact in different circumstances. So much of living seems to revolve around death and the dying process. As soon as mother's milk is no longer a necessary component of our diet, we forget what we knew and start along a laborious indoctrination. Learn to like selectively, hate selectively, to separate idealism from reality and lose in the process of division.

    Driven by necro-phobia, we fight the inevitable and hasten the irreducible. Horrors of bombed buildings bleep across our screens, yet images of dead fish elicit more emotion than the unseen wounded or dying under the rubble.

    I sweep the steps prior to climbing to my lair upstairs, in order to avoid crushing any living creature under my heavy foot, I carry a jar to rescue spiders on porches, before besotted mothers incite ignorant children to kill these harmless arachnids. Having spent time nurturing all that lives and sweats and some that breathe or gulp i feel responsible for most organisms including vertebrates. I've held every warm and fuzzy body i could and communed with all manner of critter possible in 21 countries, 3 continents and 5 zoos. Growing all native plants has been my duty to indigenous legacy. Personal commitment to living nature encompasses the understanding that this too shall die, to accept the complete cycle.

    My apologies to all i have stepped on, crushed or zapped for safety or health! My many thanks for the game i have killed to feed my children, for the rare steaks i have enjoyed and gratitude for keeping anemia away, i am told i had dominion over the species? Do apples scream when you crunch into one? So i am at peace with vegans, as well as my own need for selective pisceo-ovo-lacto fare!

    It is the quality of the interim span which concerns me. Time spent fighting time ineluctably deteriorating what we know as youth. Wasteful use of every secret potion to keep age at bay. Killing germs which eat away the leftovers of other waste. We clean life out of life and complain about bacterial revenge.

    Would we rather have kids and kittens foisted upon an already burdened environment? Turn dogs loose to procreate indiscriminately?. And yes, protect certain species at great cost to others. We allow the death penalty to avenge the few and then deny the many a peaceful natural death.

    If dying is the end of living why do we seem to fear it? The savage tendency to hold onto a person past all attempts to alleviate painful existence must be a desperate need to hang onto familiar life. Denial wears many subtle shades.

    We, as an educated, solvent society, seem mostly ignorant of balance and laws of replacement. The effects of global warming appear lost on local public, vengeance of climatic resurgence elude most people. We like to play minor god in the gene pool, and take pride in improvement. We play tricks upon natural selection; nature selects and rejects forms of life for strengthening purposes. We just change the order at will.

    Quickly here, I must voice my gratitude for having been selected to live out a productive life. Between conscience and a fair amount of imbecilic grace I may live well till I die. If I spare my instincts and principles to avoid premature decay. Empathy requires a good deal of good energy to sustain itself: I am saving mine for loving, for kindly living with myself and among others. Live on, live fine! And feed the backyard worms!