In Continuum.

So, I was looking through Google Maps for fun the other day with my mother, who was curious to find our home in Taiwan. While looking for it, we stumbled upon a series of strange architecture in the hills, and they all looked like oval-shaped footprints from above. Then my mother realized that they were actually graves, hundreds and hundreds of them, all clustered together on the side of the mountain. Curiously, my mother actually exclaimed and said that it'd be fun to find my grandparents' graves, though she didn't know exactly which ones were theirs. "This guy must be really rich", she said, as she pointed to a particularly huge grave with it's own plot of land. I figured, if your grave is big enough to be spotted by Google Maps, it is pretty damn big. Anyway, I did a search on the Lim Chu Kang cemeteries while I was looking at my old army camp, and the cluster there was pretty amazing to see as well. Rows upon rows of graves, lined up and probably numbered accordingly. "Your grandfather would be, grave number H463, right around the corner", something like that. My first thought when I saw those graves was how crammed up everything looked. Sure, you don't really need that much space when you are going to be inanimate for a long time. Still, you want to know that your final resting place is not going to be shared by a few thousand others out there, right.

There are a million ways in a million cultures to give a person a proper goodbye. The Tibetans have a very special method of burial, called the sky burial. Let's say a lama dies, and he'd be preserved for thirty days before being unwrapped and then chopped up into a dozen pieces. Those pieces of flesh would be mixed together with food to attract the animals. These rituals are usually done in the mountains, and the purpose of it is to allow the body to return back into mother nature, and usually the birds in the sky. That is also where name of this form of burial came about, sky burial, with the birds eating you up and then taking you up into the skies. The Tibetans believe in reincarnation, which means that they also see the human body as an empty vessel for the soul. Thus, at death, a human soul won't need its body, and thus it returns rightfully to where it came from in the first place. While I do like the idea of returning back to nature, I am not sure if I want my body chopped up like pork in a wet market. I think I prefer my body to be in one piece, or have some semblance of a body, even if it eventually decomposes to a skeletal form. At least the process of breaking down would be perfectly natural, and not because one of your old friends whom you used to have a drink with, decides that he'd be the one to cut you up into pieces and feed you to the birds. I suppose only the Tibetans would think that it is the best way to go.

Apparently, burial at sea has become rather popular in Singapore over the years, and I kind of like the idea of that. By burial at sea, we are not talking about taking your body out into the middle of the ocean and then be cremated. I saw a documentary about cremation in India, and some of these rituals are done right next to a river, the same river where people bathe and wash their clothes! The video was, for the most part, censored due to the involvement of a real dead body, but you get the idea anyway. The ashes of the body immediately flows away with the current of the river, and the body returns to whence it came - nice, but I am not a fan of the execution. I like the idea of my ashes being scattered out to sea, to be a part of this vastness infinitely. Besides, there won't be a grave or a hole in the wall for your relatives to visit every year, that'd be pretty troublesome I imagine. It'd be nice for them to just sit around a long table and have tea that day, and then talk about how I was in life and stuff like that. Anyway, burial at sea is a great idea to me, but then Singapore is probably not where I'd like to do it. There is a rule in Singapore that states that you have to scatter the ashes at least three or four kilometers away from the mainland. I don't see the point of that, it clearly disregards the existence of currents.

As nice as it sounds, we still have to consider the reality of things in Singapore. You really only need to go to a beach to know just how dirty it is along the coastlines. Empty bottles, lost shoes, layers of oil on the surface of the waters, plastic bags, and all kinds of rubbish just floating there along the beach. Who knows what lurks further out at sea? To think that my ashes would be stuck to one of those giant oil tankers out there or to be stuck to the body of a surfer isn't what I have in mind right now. The only place I'd be willing to scatter my ashes right now is probably in the Arctic region, where the waters are definitely less polluted. Perhaps I should have my ashes frozen in ice or something, that'd be nice. Before that, I don't suppose burial at sea is as romantic as it sounds in Singapore. It's probably too urbanized for it to be as good as it used to be. The idea of your ashes being eaten by a bigger fish, and then that fish being eaten by an even bigger fish is nice. But the problem comes when there is a high chance that that bigger fish could be caught and then served to any random person in the country. I'd hate that, really, though I'd probably be long gone from this world.

So, burial at sea is out of the question in Singapore. My next option, however, probably is going to be out of the question as well. I remember watching Forrest Gump, and Jenny's grave in the movie was right behind his house in Alabama, overlooking a giant field that seems to go on forever and ever. It is a pretty grave, with white stones lining the sides, none of those creepy black and white pictures that the Chinese seem to love so much. I really love the idea of that though, to be buried in this big green field and to be a part of nature all at once. You are not in this concrete tower with holes in the walls for you to put the urns, and you are not packed together with other fellow dead bodies in a corner of the country, away from everybody else. You are just in one with nature, buried underneath the stars and going away in a very natural process. To say that being buried along with no one else next to you has a lot of breathing space would be weird, but it does feel more comfortable and make death more inviting, somehow. But you know how it is in Singapore, they are even digging up cemeteries to make way for houses and MRT stations. I don't think anybody is going to find a big piece of land just for one single grave. Another downside to living in a small country - you are forced to be buried with a thousand other dead people.

But, just but, if I do get to be that rich, and if I do intend to buy a great piece of land for my burial site, I'd like to have a tree planted above my grave. This concept has been greatly influenced and inspired by The Fountain, and readers should know just how much I love that movie. I like the concept of us returning to nature after we die, and not to some kingdom in the clouds or a fiery chasm deep underground. That is where the whole argument in regards to life after death and religion comes in, in which I have no intentions of bringing it up at all. I don't like the idea of what the various religions tell you about their versions of life after death. I don't like the idea of humans telling other humans what happens after they die, when no one alive knows for sure how it is like. But the concept of returning to nature, at least it is more tangible, you know? You get buried, your body disintegrates, and it flows back into the ground, into the soil, into the insects, into the animals, into the sea, into the trees. I'd like to have a great big tree above my grave, and have it take me in eventually. I love how the movie speaks of eternal life in another form entirely. Eternal life isn't about living forever, but about living in another form. In this case, within a tree and to give life to the tree until the tree give its life to even more life. I like that very much indeed.

It comes back to the idea of us being stardusts, about how we were all the results of a big giant explosions in space long time ago. The concept makes sense, I feel, the way we are all made up of atoms - everything in this world. So, the breaking down of our bodies is merely a process of going back to where we came from, the same concept mentioned in The Hours, another movie that I love to death. All these concepts about going back to the beginning comforts me about death somehow, and the pain that one goes through before death is merely a transition stage. It's like traveling back in time, but there is going to be some kind of physical discomfort while you do so I am sure. I like to be in one with the nature after I die, to know that I am still able to contribute to life at death, that idea is really comforting to me. The First Father, the first human in the Mayan history, sacrificed himself to create the world. The tree of life grew out of him, with his body being the roots that spread to make the ground, and the soul became the branches that formed the sky. I really like that idea, I really do. Plant a tree on top of my grave, will you? I want to be a big tree that stands alone in a field under the stars. Yeah, I like that.