The Problem of Force | The Point Magazine

Death feels like God snapping his fingers. It’s always the same. The old sorcery flies out of him like a raven bursting free of a pie, and the spell is broken. His bones remember their age and turn accordingly to dust. There is always the briefest of moments, while his skin is still curling into parchment, when he can feel the morbid wrongness of i

... See more

Yet death still forces its way into our personal space. Its sudden and unwelcome appearance makes it only more spectral. As our urban lives increasingly involve interactions with strangers, with people or beings whose comings and goings are complete mysteries, more and more ghosts haunt our cities. As urban neighbourhoods are razed and rebuilt agai... See more

This chasm between death as a concept and death in its real form is one of the most difficult spaces we have to navigate. While the former can motivate us to live our lives fully, the latter can devastate us and introduce unmanageable levels of grief.