at Sabine's house
---------------------
Bring an appetizer, salad, bread/butter, cheese/crackers, or dessert to contribute to a wild rice chicken soup dinner & bring wine or beer also.
Do you approve of mortality? We will be taking a poll at the next banter night, and modifying natural law accordingly. Haha, but if we could, what would your vote be?
Would you take eternal life if given the chance? Do you see the stopping point as something not so bad? If so, how did you arrive to that and when?
Elegy
for my father
I think by now the river must be thick
with salmon. Late August, I imagine it
as it was that morning: drizzle needling
the surface, mist at the banks like a net
the surface, mist at the banks like a net
settling around us—everything damp
and shining. That morning, awkward
and shining. That morning, awkward
and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked
into the current and found our places—
into the current and found our places—
you upstream a few yards, and out
far deeper. You must remember how
far deeper. You must remember how
the river seeped in over your boots,
and you grew heavy with that defeat.
and you grew heavy with that defeat.
All day I kept turning to watch you, how
first you mimed our guide’s casting,
first you mimed our guide’s casting,
then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky
between us; and later, rod in hand, how
between us; and later, rod in hand, how
you tried—again and again—to find
that perfect arc, flight of an insect
that perfect arc, flight of an insect
skimming the river’s surface. Perhaps
you recall I cast my line and reeled in
you recall I cast my line and reeled in
two small trout we could not keep.
Because I had to release them, I confess,
Because I had to release them, I confess,
I thought about the past—working
the hooks loose, the fish writhing
the hooks loose, the fish writhing
in my hands, each one slipping away
before I could let go. I can tell you now
before I could let go. I can tell you now
that I tried to take it all in, record it
for an elegy I’d write—one day—
for an elegy I’d write—one day—
when the time came. Your daughter,
I was that ruthless. What does it matter
I was that ruthless. What does it matter
if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting
your line, and when it did not come back
your line, and when it did not come back
empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights,
dreaming, I step again into the small boat
dreaming, I step again into the small boat
that carried us out and watch the bank receding—
my back to where I know we are headed.
my back to where I know we are headed.
by Natasha Tretheway
Do you put your own mortality out of mind, or do you sit with it like the Tibetan Book of Living & Dying encourages? How about the mortality of those you adore most, your partner, your children, your grandchildren, your parents, your grandparents? How is your approach working for you? How does that approach influence your dailyness or relationships or ...?
Gather up your thoughts and prep materials, send them to sabinebrigette@yahoo.com & I'll post them below a week ahead of time.
From Mike
A Few Questions:
Do you remember when you first realized that you would die?
Do you currently believe your death is the end for you? If not, what follows?
Would the universe benefit if you were immortal? Are you that great?
Does mortality have any virtues for you? How about for the Human Race?
And one of my favorite Soliloquies:
To-morrow, and
to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
______________________________________
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)
______________________________________
From Jill
"When Death Comes" a poem by Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the
bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder
blades,
I want to step through the door full
of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that
cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than
an idea,
and I consider eternity as another
possibility,
and I think of each life as a
flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in
the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward
silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and
something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my
life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the
world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to
wonder
if I have made of my life something
particular, and
real.
I don't want to find myself sighing
and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited
this
world
world
_________________________________________
Also, from Jill:
It is clear that most people do not accept mortality. Very many of the world’s religions expound on
an afterlife, often in some type of “heaven”.
Others believe in reincarnation of an immortal soul. Many people believe that the soul hangs
around on earth, either bothering people or helping them.
There are several groups working to increase longevity, even
to the point of immortality. After all,
if your cells can be continuously replaced forever, you could live
forever. Others are putting their bets
with cryogenics: freezing your brain and
waking it up later, complete with all its thoughts and memories. Others want to upload to the cloud all the
contents of their minds so these precious ideas won’t be lost. To quote Michael Shermer in Heavens on
Earth: “”Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison
has contributed over $430 million toward antiaging research because he finds
the quiet acquiescence of mortality “incomprehensible”. As he told his biographer, “Death has never
made any sense to me. How can a person
be there and then just vanish, just not be there?” It’s a good question, and
one that others are working on through mind uploading””
However, you might ask yourself “so, if my mind is preserved
by IT, what about the rest of me? What
am I, exactly?”
From Sabine: (plus "Elegy" above and Dickinson lines below):______________________
|
The Death of the Moth
by Virginia Woolf
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths;
they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and
ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the
shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid
creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own
species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow
hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour,
seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning,
mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than
that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the
field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the
earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour
came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was
difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The
rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring
round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with
thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air;
which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until
every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then,
suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider
circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as
though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the
tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the
horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the
moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the
window-pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed,
conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities
of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that
to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that,
appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre
opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one
corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second,
flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a
third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in
spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off
smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a
steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it
seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy
of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body.
As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of
vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but
life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the
energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way
through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain
and in those of other human beings, there was something
marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone
had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as
possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and
zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed
one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to
forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished
and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest
circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life
might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to
view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on
the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an
end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by
him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so
stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of
the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed.
Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for
a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume
his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped
momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its
failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the
wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on
the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It
flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer
raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out
a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me
that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I
laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the
enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had
happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields
had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous
animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the
brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the
same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to
anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little
hay-coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One
could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny
legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have
submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human
beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death.
Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered
again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he
succeeded at last in righting himself. One's sympathies, of
course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody
to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an
insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to
retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one
strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted
the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I
did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The
body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over.
The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at
the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force
over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life
had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as
strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently
and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is
stronger than I am.
___________________________________________________
From Jivan:_________________________
Here is my 2 cents worth on mortality:
Virginia Wolf in "Death of the Moth" shares my outlook on Mortality.
She says, "As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph
of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder.
Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now
as strange."
I think the experience of both life and death is strange. "Life" and
"Death" are both labels that we use so much, we think they have
solidity. But our lives are fleeting, becoming more and more flakey
every day. Death is just a label for an occurrence that will happen
sometime in the future. Nobody knows what it is. What is the
experience of your brain waves or breath ceasing. Why even think
about death? There is so much to experience moment to moment in this
life. Like Virginia Wolf the great force of life and death "fills me
with wonder."
___________________________________
Kirk's:
Here is my contribution. I would like to put this in verse, but my rhyming ability is limited.
Irish Mortality
The bible says:
¨Three score and ten¨.
A life less than
that is tragedy.
A life longer than
that is an excuse for a good Irish wake,
where everyone
gathers for a good time.
It is customary to
say a few words about the diseased.
Say it is you, who
have passed away.
Everyone will want
to say something good about you.
Who wants to say
anything bad about the deceased?
It would be sadly
ungrateful at a wake, where everyone is
enjoying themselves
and your estate is their host.
So in your life,
think about your friends and relatives.
Those people who
will gather at your wake.
A few will come just
for the refreshments.
Have not you done
the same in times past?
But there will be
people that want to say something
good about you. Do
not make it too difficult for them!
__________________________________________________________________
Jill Alexander's:
Some answers to some questions:
- Would I take eternal life if given the chance? No, emphatically no. There was a popular phrase in the 60s by a hip nun, Sister Mary Corita Kent, that read, "Today if the first day of your life." My response was, "Today is the last day of your life," because it's death that urges me to be in the world embracingly, to be creative, to to be curious, to love. Knowing I'm running out of time (even in my 20s in the 60s) keeps me, well, lively.
- Does mortality have any virtues for you? Yes, it puts my life into perspective and it signals a shift to the next, unknown phase, something likely a blank though energy, which is what infuses our life at concept also leaves the body at death, never dies, it is always transformed, to where or what I haven't a clue, but it's out there or perhaps re-inhabiting another human if one believes in transmigration of the soul (the soul is what religious people call that energy).
Having been a hospice worker, I have a respect for death rather than a fear. Of course I don't want pain when dying, but pain isn't always a given as I have observed. What often happens is clarity, a question (always better than an answer), a curiosity. Again, that energy leaves the body (I did energy work, as well, so it was easy for me to experience that leavetaking in another).
I think about death in one form or another every day since being in the world fully -- I also sometimes fail at that -- sharpens my sense that death is in everything, not in the morbid sense but in the larger sense, that death at the very least puts me -- hopefully without my ego -- into the universe more broadly, more deeply (no, I'm not talking about heaven or hell). Energy, again.
Barbara Ehrenreigh said that if you think of the whole thing [life] as potentially thriving and jumping around and having agency at some level, it's fine to die.
My favorite epitaph, I forget who wrote it though I think it was a Frenchman: "Into the great perhaps." I'd be fine with that one though I prefer cremation and the scattering of ashes.
-- Jilly
The Death of the Moth
by Virginia Woolf
Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths; they do not excite that pleasant sense of dark autumn nights and ivy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain never fails to rouse in us. They are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies nor sombre like their own species. Nevertheless the present specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life. It was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months. The plough was already scoring the field opposite the window, and where the share had been, the earth was pressed flat and gleamed with moisture. Such vigour came rolling in from the fields and the down beyond that it was difficult to keep the eyes strictly turned upon the book. The rooks too were keeping one of their annual festivities; soaring round the tree tops until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.
The same energy which inspired the rooks, the ploughmen, the horses, and even, it seemed, the lean bare-backed downs, sent the moth fluttering from side to side of his square of the window-pane. One could not help watching him. One was, indeed, conscious of a queer feeling of pity for him. The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vigorously to one corner of his compartment, and, after waiting there a second, flew across to the other. What remained for him but to fly to a third corner and then to a fourth? That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea. What he could do he did. Watching him, it seemed as if a fibre, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body. As often as he crossed the pane, I could fancy that a thread of vital light became visible. He was little or nothing but life.
Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on
the window ledge in the sun, and, the queer spectacle being at an
end, I forgot about him. Then, looking up, my eye was caught by
him. He was trying to resume his dancing, but seemed either so
stiff or so awkward that he could only flutter to the bottom of
the window-pane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed.
Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for
a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume
his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped
momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its
failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the
wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on
the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It
flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer
raise himself; his legs struggled vainly. But, as I stretched out
a pencil, meaning to help him to right himself, it came over me
that the failure and awkwardness were the approach of death. I
laid the pencil down again.
The legs agitated themselves once more. I looked as if for the
enemy against which he struggled. I looked out of doors. What had
happened there? Presumably it was midday, and work in the fields
had stopped. Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous
animation. The birds had taken themselves off to feed in the
brooks. The horses stood still. Yet the power was there all the
same, massed outside indifferent, impersonal, not attending to
anything in particular. Somehow it was opposed to the little
hay-coloured moth. It was useless to try to do anything. One
could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny
legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have
submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human
beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death.
Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered
again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he
succeeded at last in righting himself. One's sympathies, of
course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody
to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an
insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to
retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one
strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted
the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I
did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The
body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over.
The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at
the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force
over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life
had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as
strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently
and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is
stronger than I am.
___________________________________________________
From Jivan:_________________________
Here is my 2 cents worth on mortality:
Virginia Wolf in "Death of the Moth" shares my outlook on Mortality.
She says, "As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph
of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder.
Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now
as strange."
I think the experience of both life and death is strange. "Life" and
"Death" are both labels that we use so much, we think they have
solidity. But our lives are fleeting, becoming more and more flakey
every day. Death is just a label for an occurrence that will happen
sometime in the future. Nobody knows what it is. What is the
experience of your brain waves or breath ceasing. Why even think
about death? There is so much to experience moment to moment in this
life. Like Virginia Wolf the great force of life and death "fills me
with wonder."
___________________________________
Kirk's:
Here is my contribution. I would like to put this in verse, but my rhyming ability is limited.
Irish Mortality
The bible says: ¨Three score and ten¨.
A life less than that is tragedy.
A life longer than that is an excuse for a good Irish wake,
where everyone gathers for a good time.
It is customary to say a few words about the diseased.
Say it is you, who have passed away.
Everyone will want to say something good about you.
Who wants to say anything bad about the deceased?
It would be sadly ungrateful at a wake, where everyone is
enjoying themselves and your estate is their host.
So in your life, think about your friends and relatives.
Those people who will gather at your wake.
A few will come just for the refreshments.
Have not you done the same in times past?
But there will be people that want to say something
good about you. Do not make it too difficult for them!
__________________________________________________________________
Jill Alexander's:
Some answers to some questions:
- Would I take eternal life if given the chance? No, emphatically no. There was a popular phrase in the 60s by a hip nun, Sister Mary Corita Kent, that read, "Today if the first day of your life." My response was, "Today is the last day of your life," because it's death that urges me to be in the world embracingly, to be creative, to to be curious, to love. Knowing I'm running out of time (even in my 20s in the 60s) keeps me, well, lively.
- Does mortality have any virtues for you? Yes, it puts my life into perspective and it signals a shift to the next, unknown phase, something likely a blank though energy, which is what infuses our life at concept also leaves the body at death, never dies, it is always transformed, to where or what I haven't a clue, but it's out there or perhaps re-inhabiting another human if one believes in transmigration of the soul (the soul is what religious people call that energy).
Having been a hospice worker, I have a respect for death rather than a fear. Of course I don't want pain when dying, but pain isn't always a given as I have observed. What often happens is clarity, a question (always better than an answer), a curiosity. Again, that energy leaves the body (I did energy work, as well, so it was easy for me to experience that leavetaking in another).I think about death in one form or another every day since being in the world fully -- I also sometimes fail at that -- sharpens my sense that death is in everything, not in the morbid sense but in the larger sense, that death at the very least puts me -- hopefully without my ego -- into the universe more broadly, more deeply (no, I'm not talking about heaven or hell). Energy, again.Barbara Ehrenreigh said that if you think of the whole thing [life] as potentially thriving and jumping around and having agency at some level, it's fine to die.My favorite epitaph, I forget who wrote it though I think it was a Frenchman: "Into the great perhaps." I'd be fine with that one though I prefer cremation and the scattering of ashes.-- Jilly
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