Why I Stopped to Look

I began to investigate a murder as I got out of my car to photograph the corpse of an adolescent black-tail deer. She was struck down by a car or truck, possibly moments before Noël and I saw her in the road. Her body was cold, but the blood had not even begun to dry, nearly neon-red and shinny in my headlights.

There are those among us who would call this photo morbid; those who would see only the sad fact that our (human) systems brought about the untimely and unnatural end of this young being. They are both well meaning perspectives; they offer a framework for compassion, respect, and awareness in their own way. Certainly I do not wish to scandalize this animal with my photos, nor do I wish to ignore the relatively tragic impact of human intrusion (in this case roads and autos).

I stopped to investigate, searching not for the fingerprints of the killer, but in fact for the fingerprints of death itself. On this trail, laid afresh, I must contemplate absence more than presence, void instead of form. Subtle though they are, the dark, the cold, and silence are the tracks and leavings of eternity. So far, this appears more morbid than the photo. But I am actually speaking about a sense of wonder.

By this corpse I marveled at the completeness of death, and simultaneously at the magnificence of consciousness. When consciousness left that deer, so did the deer. I did not stand in the road by a doe; I stood rather in the absence of one, a void-doe, a no-deer. So much was clear upon seeing the strange, clouded forms that were once eyes, and upon hoisting it up (to place it off the road, to prevent further endangerment of drivers and scavengers, Noël’s good idea), touching the once-flesh, feeling its weight devoid of the warmth and grace that creates “deer.” Its body was always just a magnificent puppet made of grass and soil, rain and salt, electricity and movement. It is amazing how immediately and irrevocably someone (person or animal) simply becomes the land, deposited as a lump of earth at his or her moment of death. We rely only on ephemeral cell walls for boundaries, separating out bodies from silt, separation contingent upon the breath… when it leaves so do the boundaries, not over time, but in an immeasurable instant.

This is why I stopped to look. It is, I think, effortless to sense these aspects of being, life, death, and consciousness, if you take a little time in the presence of a dead animal; dead humans are, of course, less accessible (practically and emotionally), but could inspire the same awareness… some of what we are also leaves, and some too becomes earth. These are glimpses of lights almost imperceptibly subtle, ideas so huge I cannot get far enough away to take them in. Even so, there is clarity in the calm, cool space left by those who have left; though I have no final conclusions. This, like all, (murder) mysteries is left unsolved, but I investigate none-the-less, grateful simply for the chance to do so.

[A quote relating to the value of animal-corpse contemplation compared with the short-comings of human-corpse contemplation. In-other-words, why people don't see much beauty or value in dead people.] “Dead humans contain too much horror, I think the vision of eternity is muddled by horror.” - Matthew Wray Robison

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker 2009, near Tomales Bay California