Observers, and observing

Observers, and observing.  Observers, insofar as they observe, always die, and more than a little.  We have to ask whether there is anything significant left to them but eyes and ears and skin, whatever does most of their observing, even when the observations they make seem the most astute and lively, and even when they seem to reside in the thick of things, there is a distance, and that distance is the distance of approximately six feet, no matter how close the living thing–the only life nearby, in this case–seems to the dead one, the cold wide-open eyes, the harkening ears, the skin you could kiss if it weren’t the skin of a corpse.

            Then how is it that observing seems to grant us access to our surroundings no other disposition could attain?  How is it that death has a proper, and probably the most proper, view of life?  When we visit a gravesite we understand; the stone could not be felt sincerely by the living.  That is, its weight, its gray color, its size and shape; all of that the living has eyes for, the living sees and is properly proud of its sight.  But the stone, the stone itself, the death-stone: that only the dead, with their eyes shut, can properly see.