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found in my dictionary:
Mountains and rivers:
crossing one, then another,
from one lonely place
to endless lonely places.
Today I journey again.
I had a strange dream last night. It involved being at home and watching an episode of Inu Yasha on TV in which Sesshoumaru died. The next episode (it was a two-parter) was about the quest to bring him back to life, which involved strangeness akin the the plot of Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody, but I didn't get to watch it because I had to go take a gun away from my brother, and then I woke up.
I woke up to the news that Octavia Butler was dead.
I haven't read any of her books, no. But I've often seen them on the shelves, and thought about reading them. One of these days I will. She seems to be universally respected by other authors, or at least those I've heard mention of her from.
What I'm reading now is Essays Written in Idleness, by Kenko. Certain themes run throughout, but one of the main ones that he constantly brings up is the fact that death comes to all of us, and takes us unaware. That we do not expect it, we do not prepare for it, we always think of it as a far off event rather than a constant immediacy. Not surprising for a series of fragments and essays written by a Buddhist monk, but true nonetheless. I was pondering this earlier, and wrote a miniature essay of my own on our need to deny the lifetime companionship that is death for us.
I wonder, sometimes, what would happen if I died. Here, so far from my family, from the people I love most in all the world, and who are more important to me than any posession. And if something happened to me, or I went missing, how long would it take before someone noticed?
The answer to that question is about two days, give or take; my colleagues would wonder if I didn't show up for work. This was a more frightening question when I considered it while living in England; with classes only once or twice a week it would likely be fourteen days or so before anyone would have figured out I was gone.
I tried not to think about that very much, when I was living in England. Unfortunately it's the kind of question anyone who lives alone must consider at one point or another.
Because one day, we will all die.
Mountains and rivers:
crossing one, then another,
from one lonely place
to endless lonely places.
Today I journey again.
I had a strange dream last night. It involved being at home and watching an episode of Inu Yasha on TV in which Sesshoumaru died. The next episode (it was a two-parter) was about the quest to bring him back to life, which involved strangeness akin the the plot of Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody, but I didn't get to watch it because I had to go take a gun away from my brother, and then I woke up.
I woke up to the news that Octavia Butler was dead.
I haven't read any of her books, no. But I've often seen them on the shelves, and thought about reading them. One of these days I will. She seems to be universally respected by other authors, or at least those I've heard mention of her from.
What I'm reading now is Essays Written in Idleness, by Kenko. Certain themes run throughout, but one of the main ones that he constantly brings up is the fact that death comes to all of us, and takes us unaware. That we do not expect it, we do not prepare for it, we always think of it as a far off event rather than a constant immediacy. Not surprising for a series of fragments and essays written by a Buddhist monk, but true nonetheless. I was pondering this earlier, and wrote a miniature essay of my own on our need to deny the lifetime companionship that is death for us.
I wonder, sometimes, what would happen if I died. Here, so far from my family, from the people I love most in all the world, and who are more important to me than any posession. And if something happened to me, or I went missing, how long would it take before someone noticed?
The answer to that question is about two days, give or take; my colleagues would wonder if I didn't show up for work. This was a more frightening question when I considered it while living in England; with classes only once or twice a week it would likely be fourteen days or so before anyone would have figured out I was gone.
I tried not to think about that very much, when I was living in England. Unfortunately it's the kind of question anyone who lives alone must consider at one point or another.
Because one day, we will all die.
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