Space and Death

My sister just had one of her first real experiences with death. She's been to grandparent's funerals, and she has had fish that have died, but yesterday, I think she really touched the realness of death in a way she hadn't before. One of our dogs decided to run away for the night, and in the winters of colorado, for a little Bichon Frise, this is not very normal behavior. Worried, my sister decided to go to sleep and try to find her first thing in the morning.... she did. Lying on the driveway just outside of my sister's window, she found our dog Lucy, on the ground, lifeless. She woke up my parents and she just cried. She called me on the phone and told me she was sorry that our dog had died.

I think, for most of my life, I have been pretty scared of death. I can remember thinking about the subject when I was little and the realization that my parents were going to die someday was almost too much for my little brain to handle. And, in those times in my life, when I have felt unsafe, I was utimately worried for my life, scared that it might come to an end. And yet, in my experience, those times when I have felt most alive, are those situations when I have felt that fear of death, or just fear in general, and somehow, just leaned into it a bit . I think the people I most admire choose to live in this way. Yet, death is one of the only things we can really be sure of. So, yeah, we are all going to die, someday. And what happens then? who knows. Wouldn't it be funny if the Christians were right? And we start walking up to these pearly gates to be judged... A guy with a huge white beard is taking notes on a clpboard... "Michael? You shall now be judged!" I'd probably just look down and say, "Fuck! they were right, those bastards!" I guess I am more inclined to believe that we are just left with out karma, our habitual patterns, like our last thought, and that's what's left. 28 grams worth of consciousness, and whatever habits you've built up or broken down. So, in that sense, it makes things in the meantime, meantime being between now and when i die, not so fuckin serious, and binding. Yeah, I may not have the best habits right now, or I may not think in the way that makes me feel real open like that, or I may forget that the more I separate myself through self-consciousness, the more I feel separated from everyone and everything... I may smoke pot and just tighten up, instead of loosening out... but I'm slowly just workin on it, and slowly seeing more and more how silly the whole thing is, and maybe that's just the point of it all. We get mad, we get sad, we get shut down, we get open... okay, that's fuckin interesting.

And it's super interesting to me how much one's focus colors and shapes their experience of the world. Like in studying a little bit of physics, and the simple idea that light is both a particle and a wave... it's a wave, or like just little vibrations, when you're not looking at it, and then, when you look at it, it for some reason becomes a particle, as solid as anything else, fundamentally. So, what? Light changes its nature just because I'm looking at it? Well, shit, that's kinda like everything else. If I'm focusing on myself, and my feeling of separation, um.... I tend to feel a bit, separate. And if I focus on the play, and let go of that self-consciousness with that and through that, then, well, that feeling of separate self turns into etherlike potential again. It's like, sometimes, I just shut down, and I feel like there's this joke that everyone around me is in on, and I haven't heard the punchline yet. And then I start to focus on that separation between self and other, I get more self-conscious, and wammo, shutdown. Yet, it's not permanent, that feeling isn't so solid, because I can almost as easily let that go, and just play a bit, and I get the joke.... and it's fuckin funny. But then I wonder, hmmmm, what's easier for me these days, to open up, or shut down... and it's those type of questions that act as a mirror to my personal habitual patterns. The key, I am learning, and remembering, is to not take it too seriously, something I've been taught by all my good friends. It just makes things easier, more workable, and silly.

So if I die today, what would I be left with? Um, this blog I guess... if I'm doing this thing right.

So, I like this kind of writing. Thanks to those who are interested in this madness and sanity play. Love to you all.


"Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face.
Do you realize? that we're floating in space.
Do you realize? that everyone you know someday will die?" - The Flaming Lips

People do this now?

My eleven year-old sister keeps a diary, which is classicly formed with a lock and key on the edge, holding her most private words shut, safe inside for only her to see. Today, I have started a blog, that is pretty much the same idea but completely naked, for anyone to see...friends, strangers, and people who I kinda know, but mostly, really don't. And I am probably one of millions who likes this idea of writing whatever is going through your mind and exposing it to the vastness of the internet.


And there's something so fuckin cool about that I think. It feels, writing within this format, that you have to simply not be afraid of who you are, or more simply, and a bit less cheese, this act of posting a diary on the internet, might actually allow some people to be honest with themselves, and not hide it.

Well, that's at least what it's doing for me. And maybe, I just want to use this as a practice for that reason most of all, and I want it somehow, to be honest enough that I don't have to hide it away. I'm sure, if I do keep this up, entries will be superficial, some not, some boring, and some uncomfortably revealing. And perhaps, if I can show myself in this way through the internet, I can show up in the similarly courageous and honest way everywhere else.

So, yeah, that's about it, for now.