ABSTRACT
So it is, perhaps, hardly surprising after all that death – the dead body – has been felt to be polluting. When I felt my body to be polluted, and when others in middle age become increasingly aware of their mortality as their body starts to age in a way that cannot be ignored, there is felt the cold presence of death. In a sense, when I wanted to vomit up the pollution I felt to be in me, I wanted to vomit up my own mortality, not least because I felt myself to be totally out of control of my own body and its functions, just as I shall be when I do die. I had a feeling that not merely was this man, H, my former teacher, literally inside me, but so was the whole line of his family: parents, grandparents and so on. I had – I still have – little idea what I was carrying around with me, in me.
