ON GRASPING

Is death painful? When someone dies a calm and quiet death, is there a moment of inexpressible anguish? Is it that prospect of a final and ultimate human pain my biggest fear? Is it a primal fear? If there is such a moment of pain, is it the fundamental human pain? Is it the predicate of all suffering? If so, is it an illusion? 

Emotions might be complex constructs of the brain, symbolic manifestations of our abstract yearning.

The sensation of being looked at is the hallucination of the social. It is the fundamental hallucination of self-perception. Maybe the definition of hallucination positions such visions within a plane of abstraction that resides one step beyond the relative articulation of perception we equate to reality, in the way that metaphysics resides one step beyond physics. This reductive form of visualization allows people to experience the sensation of grasping.

The climber grasps a jutted branch as she loses her balance; the explorer grasps the patriotic meaning of his discovery; the infant gasps for air.