Image my own
This ia an image I took some time ago, but it came to mind after my last blog entry. It’s the limp bird from the game paintings and the glove at the road side.
I previously posted it on Instagram back in October 2019. What’s curious is the entry I made. I wrote “…it’s a preoccupation with transition and being in ‘passage’ - that perhaps there’s a moment between binary markers’
This really is a preoccupation of mine. But why? Why do I focus on this area?
The bird will soon be rendered down to it’s constituent parts, as it gives itself up to the soil, feather and bone to minerals and proteins. Carbon dioxide, water, simple sugars and mineral salts.
I looked up what happens to a body that is decomposing. Breaking down to simpler elements. Then I discovered this delicious passage.
“Decomposition begins several minutes after death, with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion. Soon after the heart stops beating, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them. Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down. This usually begins in the liver, which is enriched in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content; eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to break down in this way. Damaged blood cells spill out of broken vessels and, aided by gravity, settle in the capillaries and small veins, discolouring the skin.”
Mo Costandi - 25 May 2015 Guardian Online.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/05/life-after-death
It’s like poetry.
Still Life with Dead Game, a Monkey, a Parrot, and a Dog
Frans Snyders