The alternative, it seems, though less austere, is decay. Yet, is it not possible to see how corruption is a symptom of vitality? When a thing rusts and blisters and cringes and gets yellow, it’s because it’s alive. Our bodies wrinkle and decay and get moldy and tired and flaccid because they are alive – and this is not merely an incidence of entropy, it is because nothing is of itself, alone or singular: everything is a relationship, an ecology of multidimensional forms of being.
Decay is the chorus of a thousand life forms, expressing themselves – the microbial dance of an infinitesimal commonwealth. We often think of death as the ultimate corruption – what if that means that death is the greatest exemplification of life? What if corruption brings us to new places?
