Eating Our Ancestors

As I sit on this chair, I realize that everything is made up of recycled and re-composed deceased versions of myself. All humans that have preceded me offered their organs to fertilize the wood that supports my weight, my thoughts. The food I eat is merely a reorganized ancestor, digested, re-digested and defecated until it was in the proper state to continue its journey through my digestion. Therefore, even I am composed of my predecessors--in their death I have found the substance necessary for my existence.

And yet their dreams, their thoughts, their beliefs--all have been ground to nothing by years of constant overuse of their particles. Everything they attempted to accomplish now means nothing. Their greatest contribution was merely their matter; they have permeated the earth, affecting everything in a way so minute that it is monumental in its insignificance. Their modicum of effect has not granted them immortality in this world, however. It has merely preserved their memory as a collective whole--even in our minds, they slowly conflate into an indistinct mass lacking any semblance of individuality. 

Someday I will become the food in my mouth, the slow mastication of the centuries rendering me pointless. I will allow myself to be ground between molar and cheek, between rock and foot, until I am again the earth. That is the proper cycle, is it not?

Author's Note

Just me thinking.