The Billboard

She looked up at the billboard and admired the beauty of the woman depicted next to the symbols *alpha* *chi* *omega*. It was an ad for some sort of life insurance with the promise of benefits from the beginning to the end. "The beginning of what?" she wondered, "the beginning of life? At birth? in the womb? Can you even pick an insurance policy then? Didn't need one on the other side. Or, beginning from the moment of contract signature until death? What is death? The end of being able to pay for the service?" The answers to these questions weren't clear to her from this piece of advertisement. The woman's beauty though was to be admired for sure. Her seemingly unkempt hair framed a soft angular face with sudden curvatures accentuated  by the movement of her gestures over the years. Many, many years and countless experiences evoking a plethora of thoughts and feelings, unspoken responses and ideas expressed on the seemingly silent canvas that is her skin. And beyond that colourful surface laced with lines, some bold, others perceptible only to a fine-tuned lens and eyes aware of what it means to live a human life - beyond that surface structure, a body of flesh formed to the smallest of details. Acid muscle mass and sweet deposits of fat, symphonies of cells and sub-atomic particles all orchestrated to sing the song of an aged siren, a mature madame with something to show for the years on her back. Something to show quite literally and very figuratively on the face of her spirit clothed to bear the lessons chosen by an elusive consciousness disguised as matter of fact.