death. fragments.
date. 2021
city. new york city
Scrap board
Say goodbye to something or someone
Take a week off. Completely. Shabbos for a week. Heck, Shabbos for a day.
Write letters to each of my friends and family
Death encourages us to forget the future and look toward the past.
Life as pregnancy / incubation / the Jews in the desert. Death is birth
Meditation as death.
Death is a story.
Add: ego death on acid. That’s okay. “I” will be okay.
Make a death list. Add something that died each day
History: everything which has already died / been destroyed.
Read the obituary section each morning.
Each day is born, lives, and dies.
It gets dark so I can see the stars.
“What does Christ do, but invite us to live watchfully, as if we were about to die at any moment, and to adhere to the practice of virtue, as if we were destined to live forever?” - Erasmus
Slipping into myself. Isolated. Sad.
The fear of annihilation passed from the World Wars into the Cold War into the ecological war. The fear is the same; it simply inhabits different bodies.
Let life melt away, like boiled flesh slipping off the bone, and what is left?
Death as a thing in itself
Ask people what they think happens after death
Death is beautiful (check out the Quora page)
By insisting that death is beautiful, I am trying to cover it up, turn it into something desirable. Insisting that death is this or that is just another attempt to hide from what death truly is.
Death is a going home
What is the darkness? It is the unwelcome appearance of my deepest fears.
Cremation vs burial
Death has become lonely. And thus far more dangerous.
I never got to say goodbye to tzvi. I missed his funeral.
How do I spend my last year alive? I fill it with celebration!
“In the beginning there was only one evil that had various aspects: suffering, sin, and death.”
Suffering lets the pain out. It lets the pain escape from within me. Psychological blood letting.
Humility
To be humble
Is to become immune to the opinions of the crowd.
It is to strengthen one’s self
Against the steady onslaught
of both praise and criticism,
Which meets one each day.
To be humble is not to be small,
It is not to crouch
Or cower.
It is to stand up
Tall
And become the largest person in your world.
Staying true only to your self.
No ideas of me
Will ever reflect
My true self.
[Words can only reflect
The experiences they capture.
I cannot be captured.]
My soul is
an infinite source
Of surprises.
Give and Take
Life is but a question.
Death is its answer.
Darkness
I used to think that the idea
Was to stay up late into the night
Breathing in the darkness.
I now understand that
Darkness only suffocates.
One should give oneself up at dusk
And slip into a deep sleep.
Sleep alone
Accepts the darkness.
There are two kinds of darkness:
That which contains absolute terror.
And that which contains absolute nothing.
Evil vs. nihilism
Satan vs. the devil
Absence vs presence
Too much vs nothing at all.
And so two kinds of depressions.
That which desires nothing.
And that which fears everything.
Ash Wednesday
The body consumes itself.
The World According to Garp
-- I wish I knew you when you were fifteen I wish I knew you when you were five. I wish we grew up together as kids. That was I could see you as flat chested and watch as your breasts grew.
-- You’ll get to see my breasts sag, my teeth fall out, and my hair turn grey. It’s not as exciting but…
-- Our youth is gone, isn’t it?
-- Mhm
-- How about that? I’m thirty. Dirty thirty.
————
-- Do you miss writing?
-- No, not at all. But if I do, I’ll start again. You know what I really love though? Thinking about everything. How we met and all that.
-- We can’t live in the past.
-- But I can live in the present and think about the past.
-- You’re supposed to do that when you’re old and grey.
-- Oh to hell with that. When I’m old and grey I probably won’t remember my past. You’ve got to be young when you do it. It’s really nice you know. To look back and see the arc of your life and it’s all connected. How you got from there to here. See the lines, you know? It really has been an adventure.