There must be something extraordinary in life that would make it commensurate with death, with its crushing onslaught. Strike for strike. The trouble is that life is almost always not as crushing and inevitable as death. Life is relaxed, unassembled, scattered into a multitude of incoherent moments, like a trickle of sand; and death is strong, instantaneous, like a sword blow. The memory of death strains life, makes it more resilient. Like a war that blazes somewhere on the borders and can break in at any moment - hence the state of emergency in the territory of life