Don't be downcast, soon the night will come,
When we can see the cool moon laughing in secret
Over the faint countryside,
And we rest, hand in hand.
Don't be downcast, the time will soon come
When we can have rest. Our small crosses will stand
On the bright edge of the road together,
And rain fall, and snow fall,
And the winds come and go.
James Wright Translation
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
As long as I’m of sound mind and capable body, I’m fine with it, but not at any cost. I’d rather shuffle off this mortal coil than drag out the suffering of immobility and / or dementia.
I think Atul Gawande’s “Being Mortal” is good required reading. Among other things, he talks about the smoke and mirrors of our species’s increased lifespan. (i.e. increased lifespan, yes, but too often at the cost of diminished quality of life through those additional years.)
It was a dreary winter day;
The world was cold, monotone gray.
But then, I caught a hint of heat:
Felt on my face, not on my feet.
A furnace burned in a dark place.
I felt it flush my frigid face --
Frigid once, but not any more
I stood inside that foundry's door.
The orange glow danced on my face.
It must have shown demon's disgrace.
Like a poor creature lit on fire,
Or the living dead on a pyre.
Cold as the day and my feet were,
I heard a voice - just a whisper.
"You must flee now, or you'll jump in,
and they'll not find a fleck of shin."
When you're dancing through the graveyard
you'll get some angry stares.
They'll call you "disrespectful cad"
for failing to show care.
To be carefree won't offend ghosts;
they'll wish they'd done the same.
But mourners act as if, for Death,
you are the one to blame.
Why should one hold the dance within,
when it longs to be out?
Why should expressing such pure glee
be cause to point and shout?
If you float that river down to the sea,
you will know long days of peaceful drifting,
but also rocks and rage, oh so bone-soaked.
You will be thrown from the craft, clinging --
trying to get back on to right your raft.
You will find yourself in an endless sea --
connected to all others.
What are your feelings about eating meat?
The condensed version is, I’m fine with it. As a traveler, I try to eat mostly things locals eat. While I don’t go to great effort or expense to sample the most rare and exotic foods, I’ve eaten snake in China, croc in Zambia, horse in Kyrgyzstan, and guinea pig in Peru. Anything that regular people eat where I’m visiting is fair game. [That is part of the process of breaking down the invisible barriers between us’s and them’s so as to not enter into the interaction with a feeling of superiority because: “my arbitrary cultural conventions are better than your arbitrary cultural conventions.”]
I do believe that everyone would be better off if they were closer to [i.e. more intimately familiar with] the source of their food. I feel this of myself as well, though I did have the benefit of growing up on a small farm and seeing at close range the origins of food and how life moves on to being food. (By different mechanisms [hopefully — #SoylentGreenIsPeople,] it’s a process that I am fully aware will apply to me, as well. Ultimately, nothing living gets out of this world without being transformed through a process of being food. In my case –probably — I’ll be food to bacteria and fungi, but if I have a good run and am eaten by a tiger or wild dogs, I’d not begrudge them the meal.)
In fact, as I’ve learned more about how plants and trees live, e.g. sending warning pheromone signals to neighboring trees when under attack by insects, I’ve come to see the logic by which people determine what life is edible and what isn’t as mere species-chauvinism and anthropomorphizing. It is true that there are excellent points about the environmental benefits of some form of vegetarian diet. However, when one starts to talk to environmental vegetarians about eating insects (one of the most sustainable protein sources available, supposedly,) many will shove their fingers in their ears and sing, “La-la-La-la, I don’t want to hear this.”
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
What a moment!
When you realize
that your lips had been more numb
than from Szechwan peppercorns,
and that numbness
has slid into paralysis.
You are dying:
death by Fugu --
poison blowfish.
Your heart will stop.
You will keel over,
falling from your stool
at the sushi counter.
A booth-dweller,
seeing you bounce off
an adjacent patron,
wonders why you don't
bring your arms up to catch yourself,
but - of course - they're dangling
uselessly,
and so you land face first.
The booth-dweller cringes.
There's nothing to be done for you.
You had the nerve
to try the Fugu!
But, while Fugu life is exhilarating;
Fugu death is inglorious.
I'm wired and amped; my feet know the last dance. What's a poor old end-run death dog to do But surrender to music's honeyed trance, Waltzing to it like dreams that seem cuckoo? But nothing 's crazy at last dance juncture -- Just before the call for all to get lost: When sanity stretches but won't rupture, And one can see crystalizing hoarfrost.
So many cultures
make their dead
cross a river.
The Greeks' Styx.
The Hindus' Vaitarna.
The Norse Gjȍll.
The Gnostic's Hiṭpon.
The Japanese Sanzu-no-Kawa.
The Mesopotamians' Hubur.
Taoists cross Naihe Bridge --
over what (I'm not sure,
but) is probably a river.
No rest for the dead?
It seems kind of rude.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 