Tag Archives: Death

PROMPT: Legacy

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Daily writing prompt
What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
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If “legacy” is defined as something left behind that serves to keep one’s memory alive, then I don’t. I think that goal is futile, illusory, and a bit narcissistic. Even those who are “remembered” long after their deaths are not truly remembered. For example, the Alexander the Great who is remembered to this day likely bears little resemblance to the one who was flesh and blood. What we remember are products of imagination. [Which is fine, but then why tie them to people who lived as opposed to purely fictional ones?]

If I could leave behind some configuration of knowledge of the art of human living that would be helpful to anyone (without it being tied to my identity or memory) that would be a fine thing.

“There is a finished feeling” (856) by Emily Dickinson [w/ Recording]

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There is a finished feeling
   Experienced at Graves—
A leisure of the Future—
   A Wilderness of Size.
 
By Death’s bold Exhibition
   Preciser what we are
And the Eternal function
   Enabled to infer.

PROMPT: 100-year-old

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Daily writing prompt
Write a letter to your 100-year-old self.
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Dear 100-year-old self,

In the unlikely event that we’re still alive, go play with the wolves. Let them have their meal, meager though it may be. We’ve had a good run, and – unless I miss my guess – are not feeling vigorous of either mind or body. If we are feeling vigorous of mind and body, please disregard until such time as it’s not true anymore. In said case, I’m very curious about what kind of scientific breakthrough occurred (or magic fountain we fell into,) and look forward to learning about that in due time.

Signed,

Your younger self, the one far more afraid of dementia & incontinence than of death-

“Away with Funeral Music” by Robert Louis Stevenson [w/ Audio]

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Away with funeral music -- set
   The pipe to powerful lips --
 The cup of life's for him that drinks
   And not for him that sips.

“The Bustle in a House” (1108) by Emily Dickinson [w/ Audio]

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The Bustle in a House
 The Morning after Death
 Is solemnest of industries
 Enacted opon Earth --

The Sweeping up the Heart
 And putting Love away
 We shall not want to use again
 Until Eternity --

“In a Disused Graveyard” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

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The living come with grassy tread
   To read the gravestones on the hill;
 The graveyard draws the living still,
   But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say:
   'The ones who living come today
 To read the stones and go away
   Tomorrow dead will come to stay.'

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
   Yet can't help marking all the time
 How no one dead will seem to come.
   What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever
   And tell the stones: Men hate to die
 And have stopped dying now forever.
   I think they would believe the lie.

“A not admitting of the wound” (1188) by Emily Dickinson [w/ Audio]

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A not admitting of the wound
   Until it grew so wide
 That all my Life had entered it
   And there were troughs beside -

A closing of the simple lid
   that opened to the sun
 Until the tender Carpenter
   Perpetual nail it down -

“Nightfall on the Tisza River” by Géza Gárdonyi [w/ Audio]

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Up comes the Moon on the river,
 Trees and grass quietly quiver.
 Near Szeged a wooded island,
 Od fishing barque, tied to the land.

By the moonlight, on this barque, old,
 Sat a fisherman I am told,
 Played a tune as well as he might,
 Played it well, well into the night.

On the Tisza, velvet darkness,
 Starry sky, the stars numberless,
 Spread a shroud studded with diamonds
 Radiating starry light fronds.

May have been this very spot, hark!
 Right under this rickety barque,
 In the very depths of the deep
 An ancient king's sleeping his sleep.

His coffin is gold and silver,
Of iron is made its cover.
 Up the river is glistening,
 Down the ancient king, listening.

Translation by Frank Veszely in: Hungarian Poetry: One Thousand Years. 2023. Friesen Press: Altona, MB, Canada.

PROMPT: Perspective

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Daily writing prompt
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
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I’m getting more at ease with Death by the day. In a broader sense, it’s progressively easier to not get worked up over the everchanging and unpredictable nature of the world.

Death Denied [Haiku]

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a dead tree
 swallowed by creepers
  greens from base up.