Of late I have spent much time trying to decide whether I am a materialist or immaterialist.  I long ago rejected the Christian belief of God and the Devil, or the existence of Heaven and Hell.  I looked up the definition of materialist on Wiki, but I am not familiar with most of the terms used to describe the term "materialist."  I listened to Dustin in class as he explained it, but all I can remember him saying distinctly is a belief that this world will exist even without our species living upon it.  This seemed odd to me: not because it rings untrue to my ears, but that it would ring untrue at all.  Of course this world will exist long after we are gone.  Didn't it exist for millions upon millions of years before we came to walk upon it?  It seems asinine to me that there are people who cannot comprehend the favorable odds that we will perish long before the earth does.  It's asinine because it's true.  Does that count as an adagium?  Probably not.  Maybe I am grossly misconstruing what Dustin said, and if so I apologize for it.  At any rate, I still do not know what materialism really is. 

But I hesitate to say that I am an immaterialist.  For as long as I can remember I have always believed that there must be something beyond this world.  But I second guess myself at every turn, for fear of being scorned for being too idealistic...for knowing that this belief may very well be a trick of my own mind, a silly feeling borne out of the fear of death and non-existence.  I suppose it would be very trite of me indeed to say that there may be another realm beyond this physical realm of matter that I perceive through my conscious being, but it is beyond my capability to understand it.

It's true what they say about the dead: that when somebody dies, they don't look like themselves anymore.  I'd never seen a dead body up close until I saw my best friend from child hood lying in a silver coffin her brother had spent his life savings to procure.  She OD'd thousands of miles away from home, in sunny Florida, before she even turned thirty.  I was invited to the private viewing, restricted to family, and I couldn't even cry when I looked at her lying there in that pink satin.  And it wasn't peaceful, but neither was that vessel sad to me because it wasn't her.  Sometimes I wish that I had never gone, never seen the empty matter that once contained something I loved so much...and I didn't even know how much until I stood there in shock.  I looked at her hands that used to be so warm and soft and plump that all the rest of us little girls would take turns letting her cup our hands in her own on cold winter playground days to warm them.  Sometimes, when I think too long about her, I want to dash my book of poetry to the ground.  I want to grab Wallace Stevens by the lapels and scream in his face, "I don't give a damn about your two pairs, or you dish of peaches in Russia, or your glass of water!  I'm tired of the world and all its damned infernal 'things!' Can't you understand that?" 

Maybe when I die I am just dead, and there is nothing at all beyond this.  And maybe I won't ever be able to contemplate green gleaming corn again, maybe I will have taken it all for granted.  But I won't have to think anymore about my friend who died all alone down in sunny Florida, or how my pet cat brutally diverts herself with baby field mice for playmates, or little children butchered on brisk fall mornings when they should have been walking to school.

I retrieve my book from the floor....