ABSTRACT
For this is at the heart of what it is to be human, to be animal: the slackening, the aging, the ebbing of strength and youth, the waning as of the moon, the eventual extinction. This is often viewed as a fearful thing, which perhaps also accounts for the ostracizing of those with atypical embodiment, whose differences have been used over the ages as vehicles to scare, warn, explain or remind us of our mortality, and the inevitable, inescapable cycle of life.
