Mortality

[Doreen Peri]

Mortality is a harsh teacher. I don't know what I'm supposed to be learning. Maybe how brief and precious life is. Just heard on facebook that someone from my high school class died unexpectedly last night. Heard similar news 2 weeks ago. This is the second former classmate who's died in the past 2 weeks. I didn't know either of them very well but that's not the point.

[the mingo]

That's not the point. You can say that twice & mean it.

[XPress]

I didn't know either of them very well but that's not the point.

You don't need to know them well, it's the wake up call they are carrying, that we all know, far to well.

I had two "friends" last summer, I call them friends, but they were people I knew from school, one of them I couldn't stand, so I felt like a hypocrite when I attended his funeral, only to find the church was packed with fellow hypocrites.

It was kind of weird, cuz the other guy that died, he was a nice guy, and apart from me, only his family attended the service.

It felt kind of wrong to me, how could someone that no one liked, fill a church, and a good guy slip away, almost unnoticed?

Anyway, I've managed to ramble here, the point is, or the point I was going to make is, that I entered the summer as SuperMan, I could fly, I was invincible, I was going to live forever, and then a couple of weeks later I was but one small grain of sand on the beach of life.

It kind of openned my eyes, it was a big wet slap, across the face, from the gods, a wake up call, that I was determined to take notice of, and that was going to change my life, except a few weeks later I was slowly slipping into my cape and tights again.

I guess I'm still young enough, to see forever in front of me, I'm young enough to be immortal, so these things jolt me, but don't derail me from the track, yet.

I guess as we get older, and the path in front of us gets shorter, each jolt seems that much harder, and it takes that little bit longer, to become immortal again.

But, young, or old, male or female, black or white, death doesn't discriminate, and when he comes calling, he causes us all to stop and pause, and question our own mortality, at least for a while.

[stilltrucking]

What interests me is that if you had not read in Face Book that they had died they would still be alive in your memory.

I did not learn of a friend's death until weeks after it occurred. The time between her death and my knowledge of it she was still alive in my mind... And I could think about meeting her again. As if she died twice, once in the world and again to me.

Lew Welch just turned up one day,
live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
"you didn't shoot yourself after all."
"Yes I did" he said,
and even then I felt the tingling down my back.
"Yes you did, too" I said—"I can feel it now."
"Yeah" he said,
"There's a basic fear between your world and
mine. I don't know why.
What I came to say was,
Teach the children about the cycles.
The life cycles. All the other cycles.
That's what it's all about, and it's all forgot."

("For/From Lew", Axe Handles, Gary Snyder)

[tonyc]

You know, it's weird how the grim reaper operates.
I lost my mother, my kid brother, two brother in laws, my ex girl freind and her baby, two close freinds and both grandparents all within a year..two years ago.
I was in shock for a long time, don't know why but I lost faith in God.
For some reason, I believe when we die that's it, maybe we reincarnate, but I can't prove it.
Finally I just look at it as "they died first" we are all gonna die.
It doesn't matter who's first or who's last, we're all destined to extinction. All data will be deleted, your body will decay and noone will remember you a year later, it'll be just like you never exhisted.

That's also when I came to the realization that life is pointless, we live to collect shit, struggle to survive..then die and lose all
Oh well, got to go and chop some wood.

[mtmynd]

tonyc -
That's also when I came to the realization that life is pointless, we live to collect shit, struggle to survive..then die and lose all Rolling Eyes
Oh well, got to go and chop some wood.

curious... why go chop wood if your life is pointless?

[Lightning Rod]

let me help you out here cec
(I can't believe you asked the question)
we chop wood and carry water BECAUSE life is pointless
not in spite of it being pointless

[mtmynd]

[Lightning Rod]

ponder, grasshopper

[Lightning Rod]

Mortality is a harsh teacher. I don't know what I'm supposed to be learning. Maybe how brief and precious life is. Just heard on facebook that someone from my high school class died unexpectedly last night. Heard similar news 2 weeks ago. This is the second former classmate who's died in the past 2 weeks. I didn't know either of them very well but that's not the point.

we have to ask ourselves the question:
Is Facebook death real death?

Lrod is feeling crucified
Lrod is being buried today
Lrod is experiencing resurrection, wow! groovy!
etc.

I used to call my dead friends Pips, my backup chorus
now they are looking more like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

my grandfather was a faithful funeral attender
seemed like he made about one a week in his later years, his old friends going
by the time he died, there were none of his friends left to attend his

[stilltrucking]

for somebody who spends a lot of time trying to make points all I got to say to you is

[tonyc]

mtmynd

why go chop wood if your life is pointless?

Because it's cold....helloooooooooo
So here's a question for ya...
Why is it, rivers have been dumping into the ocean since the beginning of time, but yet, the oceans never fill to the point of backwashing into them?
Something dam fishy here...

[stilltrucking]

Sounds like a koan tony
not that I know what a koan is

Mtmynd the koany man
or maybe that is nazz

pardon me for butting in

Did you ever hear of an estuary?

A drowned river

The Chesapeake Bay

Land of pleasant living

Life is a bitch and then you die

I have heard that saying

maybe that is true

But my life has been beautiful

I have been fortunate so far

But

I will die a failure

I will never do all the things I wanted to in this life.

Mortality is a harsh teacher

and I never learned a got dam thing from it.

I used to study the last words of my heroes for a clue.

George Fox on his death bed for one. Gandhi for another

I am pretty sure my last words will be
"Oh shit"
Or maybe
"Oh no, not again"

Sorry to hear about you loses Tony


I never had any faith in G-d
to lose
raised to be an atheist
then in my thirties I got saved
everybody and their brother was getting saved in the seventies.

Billy Joes Shaver, some call him the west texas hemingway, I call him a hero, he lost his wife, his mother, and a son
and had a heart attack on stage
all within a year I think

and still kept his faith
a west Texas troubador
the most redeeming quality I have found in Texans
is their music

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[Scootertrash]

Ask not for whom the bell tolls..

[stilltrucking]

I have not heard a church bell toll in years. Maybe I have not been listening closely enough. Do they even still have bells.

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."