Asleep or Dead?

Asleep, but spooky picture of me that Dina took. At first it really creeped me out. But then i got used to looking at it. I keep it saved in my phone, and look at it once in a while. To see what i would look like dead. Also, kind of helps get used to the idea in a way.

Non-Sensical

A little bitty from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"

(from a passage in which the main character finds himself descending into Death)

"She turned to the path ahead of him, pointed to the three ways he could go. 'Okay,' she said. 'One way will make you wise. One way will make you whole. And one way will kill you.'

'I'm already dead, I think,' said Shadow. 'I died on the tree.'

'There's dead,' she said, 'and there's dead, and there's dead. It's a relative thing.'"


and a few pages later....

"'You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you cannot have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color.'"

I love the metaphors in the last sentence, though I don't think metaphor is the correct term for them - because it would be a metaphor if it wasn't possible. And I like to think of the possibility of the senses becoming interchanged when one's body begins to shut down. It happens during seizures, does it not (I will look that up). But regardless, to hear color, or to sense weight with your vision, would make dying a joyful process. I think. At least for me. I'd be having a blast. Gasping for breath I'd say, "Hey rewind. One more time. Can I do that again?"

The Peace Box

I may eventually write a blog that is worthy of this new finding, but right now I will just let you see for yourself. And remember to watch the video. And don't know HOW this helps sell their product.


"Major economic and environmental changes are reshaping our society with profound repercussions all over the world, there have been few new products in the field of funeral services.

Naturally our customers have not escaped these developments. This is why our environment-friendly coffin called the PeaceBox represents a breakthrough for funeral directors in terms of material."

The Peace Box

FEAR is Happening!

So. Since I couldn't make the prime time meeting I did not know right away if the Fear Show was going to happen. It is! So are meeting was justified, and all plans are in effect. The Fool's Machine Collective (on the fucked up island) will live on!!
the Photo is of a happy dance. It is quite happy. It's no dance of the macabre... or is it?

Alex the African Grey

The last time Irene Pepperberg saw Alex she said goodnight as usual. "You be good," said Alex. "I love you." "I love you, too." "You'll be in tomorrow?" "Yes, I'll be in tomorrow."

These were the last words in a conversation between a theoretical chemist and her 31 year-old parrot, Alex. He died this year on September 6th. Alex had a vocabulary of 150 words, knew the names of 50 objects and could describe various color and shape patterns of objects, even if he had never seen the combination of characteristics before. He understood the concepts of bigger, smaller, same, and different. He would apologize to his trainers/collaborators if he made a mistake.

This is from the Obituary column in a late September issue of The Economist.

This post is credited to Jessica, as this is her specific interest: animals and death.

Incorruptible

Julia Buccola Petta died in 1921 of childbirth. She is buried at Mount Carmel cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. I have visited her grave. She was 29 when she died; her child was stillborn and was buried with her. If you go to Mount Carmel you will see her monument, a reproduction of her wedding photo in sculpted form:



It is remarkably accurate. On her sculpted wrist is a watch, just like the photo from her wedding day. Julia Buccola Petta is also known as "The Italian Bride" or "The Incorruptible Italian Bride." She is the subject of ghost lore, based mostly in fact: after her death, her mother, Philomena, began having vivid dreams of her daughter calling out to her and begging her to exhume her body. Another version involves Julia telling her mother that she was still alive. When the dreams did not stop, Philomena requested that her daughter's body be exhumed, but the Catholic Church would not allow it. It took her about six years to receive permission from the church to bring her daughter's body up from the earth. When they opened her coffin, this is what they saw:



Julia's body was perfectly preserved. They took this photograph of her body, then placed her back in the ground. If you visit Julia's grave, you will see her monument, her wedding photo secured to the base, and the photo from her exhumation beneath that. Incorruptible bodies are normally associated with Catholic saints, the most famous of which is Saint Bernadette of France. Julia Buccola Petta was never canonized but since her exhumation people have claimed to see a woman in a white dress near her grave. She is not a saint, but a myth, and whether her body is still incorruptible is left to speculation.

When I visited her grave, I was fifteen. My understanding of the story at the time was that she had been buried alive, and I looked closely at the photo above to see if the ceiling of the coffin had been scraped away by the panicked fingers of the Italian Bride. I was there with my cousins, and my mom and her sister. For some reason on that sunny spring day almost 15 years ago we thought it would be fun to visit the local cemeteries; our goal was to find the grave of Al Capone, which after much searching we did. It is small, flat, and humble. Not what you would expect.

While at Mount Carmel cemetery my cousin Maggie and I were so absorbed in visiting Julia's grave that we did not notice that everyone left, that in fact they had all gotten in the car and were driving away. They didn't forget us; they just thought it would be funny. We totally freaked out. We were running as fast as we could, yelling, visions of the gates of the cemetery suddenly closing and keeping us trapped between the dead and the living. No doubt Julia would appear with an inviting hand to stay there with her forever.

We got through the gates, though, and the car stopped. They thought it was the funniest thing, and as we caught our breath and our hearts we knew we would need about ten years to find the humor in it. Now, yes, when it comes up in conversation we shake our heads and laugh. But back then, I was terrified. I believed in ghosts when I was fifteen, and I still do. I've read Chicago Haunts all the way through. I've also read Graveyards of Chicago, a great guide for all Chicago-area cemeteries. And I highly recommend visiting a cemetery; there is such beautiful art there, and so many forgotten lives. I visit them because no one else will.

The Dance of Death, Meets the Midnight Wanderings of an Educated Zombie

So, life is a little bit like death for me these days. I don't see the sun because of my odd sleep schedule. In my waking hours I go to meetings, and then I come home and watch videos on super string theory, relativity, chaos theory, and then I read books on death. I fear this isn't so healthy, mostly because of the weird sleep schedule. I barely see people. So this strange thing happened to me Sunday night/Monday morning. I went to sleep around 5am (which is normal lately) and I could not wake up until 6pm Monday night (13 hours asleep) I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was pale, and I had the largest black circles I had ever seen around a pair of eyes. I called in sick for a meeting and tried to go back to sleep. The idea was to try to sleep until around 5am Tuesday so that I could begin a new day with sun in it, to try and switch my schedule around, and perhaps go to bed at midnight or 1am and wake up around 9 or 10 more like normalish people, so that I could see the sun, shop, see friends, my sister, my mom, anyone. But I woke up at midnight, and now my plan is to wander the streets and my apartment, sorting through books and putting them on shelves, reading about death and Gothic literature and perhaps learn to play banjo, and then not got to bed until Midnight. (24 hours awake after sleeping for 17 hours.) We'll see. Anyway... I began searching the internet for classic Gothic texts, and I fell upon a prose book with woodcuts by Hans Holbein called The Dance Of Death. I was searching for interesting texts about death but what I found most impressive were the woodcuts. I am posting one here, but please check them all out. They are cartoony, frightening, beautiful and kind of remind me of a morbid "Where's Waldo."
The Dance Of Death