Tag Archives: death

A deep image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS captured by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South at Cerro Pachón in Chile

TENUOUS: what will be?

Is tomorrow guaranteed? What will the future bring? What song should we sing?

Interstellar object I3/Atlas is currently at its perihelion, or closest point to our Sun at approximately 1.36AU. Among the anomalies associated with this comet-like object, its approach is unlikely: It has been hidden from Earth’s view by the Sun’s glare throughout October (though some scientific reports in review claim to have observed the object’s emissions despite solar glare). This occulted segment of its long trip is also its most opportune time to make orbital adjustments to its own direction or for any probes it could dispatch, using the gravity of our Sun to assist. All this and other unmentioned anomalies to say: while unlikely, there is some cautious speculation that this is a technologic object, directed by an Alien Intelligence (AI).

And I say that to ask: If an alien vessel were in our backyard today and, perhaps at this moment, sending probes our way – for what purpose, one can only speculate – what would one do? Even if that were a fact, there is still much uncertainty.

Top view of 3I/ATLAS's trajectory (blue) through the Solar System, with orbits and positions of planets shown
Image via CSS, D. Rankin; Video recorded and edited by User:Renerpho – https://neofixer.arizona.edu/css-orbit-view, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=169627869

Not commenting on likelihood, but hypothetically: If it were the case that alien intelligence was in our backyard this moment, close and unseen, then these moments would feel tenuous. What would one do? Savor, I suppose. It is risky and significant enough that squandering time would be easier to recognize as foolish. But it would be uncertain and inspiring enough to not throw one into despair and defeatism.

If one was known to have only a week to live, unlike in this uncertain scenario, then I imagine ‘savoring time’ would look uniquely scarce and conclusive: skipping chores, saying goodbyes, focusing fully on favorites. In contrast, with uncertainty of what the world two months later looks like, it is wise both to savor and also to steward. Take care of one’s future but also do not expect one’s future is guaranteed. Do the dishes, while remembering the precious ephemerality of it all. Savor, and also steward.

This kind of tenuousness, a liminal existential space, could be healthy. A reminder, a reorientation, that we only ever exist Here Now.

How will one Be when it arrives,

What’s Next

Moment by moment
Building momentum
What's the best next step?
May peace be up on you!

#BeHereNow #BreatheEasy #OneLove

AND FOR MY LAST ACT

What if this was my final act?
This moment, this action
What’s happening at this breath?
Reading this post?
Well, at least you’re not listening to an Exxon advertisement
If that is the kind of thing you’re exposed to

How we spend our time is affected by the systems around us
Where we are, when we are, much of that beyond us
Under the stars
Here now
Spinning mightily on this big beautiful blue planet

Evolving alongside fellow lifeforms,
It does appear we have some choices within our purview
For if this was my final act,
It was I who chose to be typing at this moment, isn’t it?
Chose in that it arose in my clothes and genes and experiences
And it will be I who lives with, and ends with, that moment
Each moment a new beginning, potentially
Moment to moment
To momentum and beyond

(What’s the best next step?)
(What’s the f(x)?)
With love

What if this was my final act?
Practicing qi’gong, East or West
Perhaps singing a song
Or listening
~ ~ ~
שְׁמַע
~ ~ ~
Taking It All In
One Self
Actualizing
Actual I’s in the vicinity of
Temple

Peace, peace, peace, One Love

red lily flower in bloom

Will Today

Will today be repeated, relived, endlessly as in Nietzsche’s eternal reoccurrence?

Or will today be a last, a final day, bursting with meaning as if facing death (or not) at dawn, as in Dostoyevsky’s story?

…

Either way, today one’s present self is the most able accomplice for the wellbeing of one’s future self.

“Whatchya gonna do today?”

Time is of the essence. A few practices seem rarely wasteful, whether one has lots or little time: meditation, physical fitness, when in doubt tidying up.

With this precious gift – these fleeting grains of time we are given generously and with no certainty – how can we reciprocate?

No doubt we can spread our time too thin, there’s only so many…

Or we can squander time, “casting pearls to swine” (or attension to IT)

May we cultivate

Gardens, discernment, and peace

Balance and gratitude, to apply our times treasures and talents

Forestablishingaliveablefuturity

Sol dialed: remembering mortality with grave stones and grave stories of near death

A friend shared a beautiful tombstone with a sundial and it served as a prompt to remember death. The sundial “says to those of us above ground: this is the “last hour to many – possibly to you”. What would you do if this was your last hour, day, week, month or year? Hour/day seems easier to conceive of. Nice to have a little advance notice and time to think about it eh. Just shooting the breeze a little… Maybe phone up loved ones, tell em what they need to hear good and bad, and make them brave. Whatever one is generally too chicken to do/say. Chickens are almost certainly less cowardly than most humans. Go out in the street/digital town square and loudly try and share whatever seem like the best ideas you learned in this life for this struggling humanity to find joy in one another and the earth; good luck guys. If it’s a whole year obviously stop as much as possible doing anything that isn’t EXACTLY what you want to be doing; differentiating one’s existence as a part of creation from any limited or misjudged human notions of what one should do...”

And to that I replied:

Thanks for this important message. Wise words. The idea that the goal before dying is to find the best ways to give everything away – that hits home.

A year? Probably adding to the list, write a book of aphorisms/wisdoms/educational autobiography and share it most goodly.

A day? For sure say hey to my loved ones and homies. Deuces

An hour? Oh there’d be hard feelings. Hugs and squeezes. A note of the nearly dead. Some sort of meditating to tune the star ship.

I had a few near death experiences, one intense one when on a trip with the professor I think we met via. Homeboy [WW] swam and saved my life, but for some time I didn’t think I’d be saved, as I was facing death in a slow but fast way. Slow enough to notice, fast enough not to tell a soul, as I got dragged further and further away by rip current at a remote coast on the Pacific. I tried all the things to remedy the situation. And then I tired. Wave after wave, it’s daunting, nature is so vast and exhausting, its flows so relentless and big. What would I do if I had moments left to live? I’d sorrow for the suddenness and shock with which I’d hit the hearts of those who’d miss me. I’d long to tell some folks my heart, mainly just that I love them dearly. I’d take deep comfort in knowing who already knows that love and it needs not saying. I felt no concern about stuff or unfinished projects, beyond the impact it’d have on those I loved.

It comes down to relationships. And the preciousness of breath.

Breathe easy frend

Burying the dead in the beginning

Adult raven photograph by Ron Hanna via https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/common-raven#photo3

Studying Jewish folklore brings one around many old testament stories, and with that, the source of many cultural idioms and expressions: “the writing on the wall”, the value of atonement, among much else.

Something new to me is a source of wisdom on burying one’s dead. I did not realize advice about it for Jews goes back to beresheit:

…

After Hevel [aka Abel] was slain, he was lying in a field, his blood spattered over sticks and stones. The dog who had been guarding Hevel’s flock now also guarded Hevel’s corpse from the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky.

Adam and his mate came and sat by the corpse, weeping and mourning for him, but they did not know what to do with Hevel’s body.

A raven whose companion had just died said: I will teach Adam what to do. The raven took his dead companion, dug up the earth before the eyes of Adam and his mate, and buried him in it.

Adam said: We will do as the raven. At once he took Hevel’s corpse and buried it in the ground.

…

Commentary on the fourth reading of the first torah cycle, via https://headcoverings-by-devorah.com/MidrashBereishit3.html, with image via https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/common-raven#photo3

Visiting a neighbor’s fire

Though the work is easier together, we spread out in the darkest time of year to cozier burrows, diffusing the weight of winter, lighter on the land.
Though it is dark, we are warmed to know there are familiar others nearby. Our struggles are tied up together, and while one faces scarcity, someone else has more than enough to share, so that we may survive together and work together in brighter times.

So it has been through the ages. So it is still in little ways in overdeveloped places where big systems eclipse mutual aid: we turn to neighbors for power during long outages, for tool shares, for relationship. So it is still in big ways in underdeveloped places where small systems are made sufficient by human relationships: cooperating to cultivate land, to maintain infrastructure for basic needs, for relationship.

The lessons of the seasons proceed before us, though we may be distracted by a house on fire, our own or our neighbors.

May we be there for each other, so that we may all meet our needs, in mutual benefit with the sources of that sustenance and satisfaction. May peace be upon you.

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happy renewal

In cultures around the world, the quarters of the year come with special significance. Here at the midnight of the year we have the fullest darkness yet with that a moment of renewal, of a change in direction as if hitting a rock bottom. Hopefully a soil bottom, but anyway. . .

A merry Christmas celebration of the birth of the solar Son of G-d in many traditions; a happy חֲנֻכָּה lasting of the fuel of the flaming trinity which is a candle (flame, wick, wax); and to all the rock bottom & bounce back of seasonal midnight, winter’s dawn. With that: a new year, an inflection, an arc to bridge the fall and rise, an angle to connect the number lines of one’s lives. A threshold – where you going? I&I Hॐ.

שלום One Love

Mapu e Ixã remixed: Grief and Gratitude on Environmental Empathy And Fundamental Flux (cr0 & Mu)

I give thanks
for the source
for the music
for the indigenous people who share it
for the mutualism one can live
showin’ the way

Thanks
For the present

The grief of a flower.
The grace of a bird.

The wisdom of a way.
The finality of a word.

50 million year + mutualism
Resounding generation – we hear’em

—

A grief. I feel it for a brief time now and now again. Takes ya to the deeps, something that comes with ya to ya sleeps.
Environmental, mental, an ever sentimental scent that scarce sense keeps dyin’
What I & I am finding
Renewal keeps tryin’, LVX movement illumine what’s next
Each particle a wave
Each ending a new beginning
A new in-ing, a new unfolding
A new present olding
Each one teach one, love some way to say two become one
Some one to be, the one self you see part “I” part “the” part “we”
A memory out of each moment, a moment of momentum
And on and on and on went
. . .
5 element theory got folks kinda leery
Got me in peace like a circle and a square
And I dare in this bi-polar world to try to be a triangle in the spot
☉ne dot in a circle
That’s sun, that’s light, that’s life, that’s one
The boom of m☽☽n in the room ☽y☽lin’ through forests and tombs
And tunes, as life goes on
And on and on and on went
. . .
New beginnings, for ever
Grief and gratitude, toward Home one better
Shalom
Shalom Shalom
One Love