[Platt] Death is the end of life, what I would call First-Order Reality. [Arlo] Disagree, Platt. "Death" is an analogy we use to understand the absence of patterns. Many cultural analogies saw this not as an "end", but as a "transition". Your statement "is the end of life" is one, particular analogy "man" has come up with to understand this absence.
--------------------- And I would add to Platt and Arlo's dialogue, that death is certainly not the end of life. It might be the end of "a" life... But if the isolated self is an illusion, then death is simply the cessation of an illusion. therefore, Quality is an illusion. And illusion is a very desirable and high quality phenomena. Sometimes what happens to you is that you get subjected to whatever book happens to be by my bedside when I'm in a certain mood, like now. The book is called The Undertaking, and it's author is a poet and an undertaker, a nice combo if you can land it, I'd say. Undertaking is a pretty steady business. The business of death being a sorta freaky kind of capitalistic enterprise, having a poet to explain it can be really nice. I like the book, so I'll inflict it on you. As I picked it up and read it this evening, it resonated with two different threads: Platt and Arlo's conversation Steve and Matt's dialogue on religion... The first essay is called, "The Undertaking" and it has a recurring theme started in a humorous way. The theme is that "the dead don't care" and the humorous way is the constantly recurring encounter with people who when they remark upon his profession they almost always state their preference for burial and it goes a bit like this... "In the same way, the priest that married me to this woman's daughter-- a man who loved golf and gold ciboria and vestments made of Irish Linen; a man who drove a great black sedan with a wine-red interior and who always had his eye the cardinal's job--this same fellow, leaving the cemertary one day, felt called upon to instruct me thus:"No bronze coffin for me. No sir! No orchids or roses or limousines. The plain pine box is the one I want, a quiet Low Mass and the pauper's grave. No pomp and circumstance." He wanted, he explained, to be an example of simplicity, of prudence, of piety and austerity--all prieslty and, apparently Christian virtues. When I told him that he needn't wait, that he could begin his ministry of good example even today, that he could quit the country club and do his hacking at the public links and trade his brougham for a used Chevrolet, that free of his Florsheims and cashmeres and prime ribs, free of his bingo nights and building funds, he could become, for Christ's sake, the very incarnation of Francis himself, or St. Anthony of Padua; when I said, in fact, that I would be willing to assist him in this, that would gladly distribute his savings and credit cards among the worthy poor of the parish, and that I would, when the sad day duty called, bury him for free in the manner he would have, by then, become accustomed to; when I told your man these things, he said nothing at all, but turned his wild eye on me in the way that the cleric must have looked on Sweeney years ago, before he cursed him, irreversibly, into a bird. What I was trying to tell the fellow was, of course, that being a dead saint is no more worthwhile than being a dead philodendron or a dead angelfish. Living is the rub, and always has been. Living saints still fell the flames and stigmata of this vale of tears, the ache of chastity and the pangs of conscience. Once dead, they let their relics do the legwork, because, as I was trying to tell this priest, the dead don't care. Only the living care. ------ Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking --- Now, this reminded me of another bedside book and something I read a while ago, Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
