Decay is just another senseless borderline between the whisper of the ghosts of past days and the roar of painfully recovered memories. It is the heavy boots of time and the luster in the countless tiny eyes of rats. Time, rats, time, rats… so goes the unbearably slow pace of decay turning dust into ash and ash into nothing. But Man, the son of decay (often misspelled as “clay”), has invented a wonderful set of wild lies, including culture, history and the self to rationalize the fear of decay in the vain hope of breaking its logos. He imprisoned time in small ticking boxes and banished the luster of all the world’s rats’ eyes into the realm of metaphor. Nevertheless, all that humanity did was shackle itself to decay. Hourly, time sticks its tongue out from the small ticking boxes mocking humans’ impatient denial of decay. But it is there, everywhere. It is there in the big eyes of famine-struck children in Africa. It is there lurking glaringly in the eyes of criminals, war-mongers, politicians and all of the fake statues of liberty in the third world.

Nathan Troi Anderson

Are all human perceptions then but pale shadows of decay? A gathering of dancing shadows drifting aimlessly in the endless corridors of human memory? What remains are the pale reflections of decay’s shadows: in the shattered mirror of human life: the broken joy of what once was a smile and the deep trails of time’s ticking wheels on a severely wrinkled face. Here are the crumbled and faded shadows of yesterday’s footprints.

J. K. Putnam

But then isn’t the invocation of decay a celebration of human hypocrisy? The same time-shattered face can be an ugly spectacle and/or a mirror of wisdom and experience. It depends on the viewer and the object in question. Such semantics of human hypocrisy (or is it indecision, or denial?) can elevate the bitter sum of human tyranny and suffering to that of a cherished historical relic. Rome’s Coliseum: What do the swarms of tourists look at and preserve in their photos and videos but the irresistible appeal of decay to the innermost darkness in the human soul?

Nathan Troi Anderson

The shining heroics of war also render this fine, confused line. They are no more than a thin curtain screening the ultimate degradation of humanity into the abyss of decay. Medals, decorations, codes of honor are the glory of decay in the human world. Every war, every medal, every military parade is a celebration of the eternal imprisonment of humanity in decay’s all-encompassing arena: tombstones mark the endless trails of the murdered, disfigured, orphaned, homeless, dishonored: the betrayal of all that is human.

Nathan Troi Anderson

Decay is so familiar because it puts on a human face and walks with a big, funny smile that disdains our desperate clinging to free will and the stock exchange. That familiarity might breed contempt but decay as a human mask surely breeds names and epithets that foreground human language and perception. The world and eternity are really linguistic constructs of decay; this “d” proliferates every mortal second of the human lexicon: decay, decline, decomposition, degeneration, deterioration, dust, devil, death, defense, democracy. Are the d-days of human history but commemorations of this familiarity? Isn’t decay the actual proprietor of all the prisons, hospitals, cemeteries and other institutions of civilized human society? Find me a mortal who won’t shake hands with decay... because I could not stop for decay he gently stopped for me. What remains in the wake of decay but the shuttered remains of broken sunrays, a handful of maggots and the hollow echo “Say the struggle availeth not!”

Nathan Troi Anderson

So the prophecy goes (said in a deadly serious, but fake, Hollywood tone): “Desperately helpless stands the Son of Man on the plains of Mount Armageddon defiantly facing the armies of Decay with few weapons left: the laughter of children, the chirrup of sparrows and the faith in tomorrow’s sunset.”

Nathan Troi Anderson