here he comes with that death stuff again

Here I speak of death again. For those who do not wish to hear it, Flee! Flee!

An attitude exists in our culture that one is not to acknowledge death or if one does, to "rage, rage against the dying of the light!" [And of course, in one's own mind, it never happens to oneself (there's truth in that). One is always the one offering condolences to the bereaved and saying over the open coffin: "S/he looks good, doesn't s/he?"]

Death is no enemy. Nor is it a dying of light. Death is an entryway to where we already are.

Contrary to what you might think with my postings on this Geezer blog, I do not sit around mooning about death. Au contraire! I was called to read Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" (yes, I receive callings and I answer them) yesterday morning in preparing for my Saturday Wu Chi Ku class and opened it to this passage:

"We must accept our existence as far as ever it is possible; everything, even the unheard of, must be possible there. That is fundamentally the only courage which is demanded of us: to be brave in the face of the strangest , most singular and most inexplicable things that can befall us. The fact that human beings have been cowardly in this sense has done endless harm to life; the experiences that are called 'apparitions,' the whole of the so-called 'spirit world,' death, all these things that are so closely related to us, have been so crowded out of life by our daily warding them off, that the senses by which we might apprehend them are stunted."

In focusing on the phenomenon we call death, I am unstunting my senses. In this focusing, I am finding that rather than calling me away from life into some morbid crusty chamber of the soul where I sit with cast down eyes awaiting your removal of my bodily remains, I leap into life with greater joy.

How to explain this other than to say that death is part of who I am and is thus already transcended. Can I not feel a teensy bit of joy at knowing this, deeply knowing this?

potential obituary

Potential Obituary: "Rather than write vast incomprehensible voluminous tomes, he published his thoughts in the ephemera of facebook and blogdom in brief and pithy statements, like fallen leaves to be scattered by the next small breeze."

"fastened to a dying animal"

Carl Jung points out that it is as neurotically unhealthy for us as we age to not confront and engage death as it is for younger folk to not confront and engage life. In younger years we spew our sperm and release our eggs at the physical, social, and psychic levels and nurture our progeny. In later years, we face our dissolution (we are dissolving) and realize as Yeats said that we are "fastened to a dying animal."

In this age of scientific materialism and ratio-nal consciousness, with all that is not picked up by the physical senses viewed as nonexistent hogwash, one is expected to simply be stoic and of reasonably good humor about this. One assumes the yogic position of bending around and kissing one's butt goodbye. And that's that.

I can see the value in that kind of attitude but as I age (73 now) see that yogic stance as an abortive process. Something is being born here, here in these geezer years.

I have always been a phenomenologist, accepting and owning my experience rather than some societal creed, or being swept away by the latest fashion of ratio-emotional logic. My geezer experience is that I feel like an egg in an incubation chamber, like a philosopher's stone in an alchemical furnace.

I find dying to be an amazing process. (Make no mistake about it. If you are over 50, you are dying.) I watch myself dissolve. It is a great adventure, perhaps the greatest of all. I am a seed in the ground of existence/nonexistence, a ground far beyond Wall Street and WalMart, preparing to die as all seeds must in order to be born.

geezer notes while walking around

-- Lord, deliver me from holiness. Let me never fall into the piety of convention.
-- How can you explain to anyone what you are doing?
-- S**t! My friends are either dying or moving out of town. Guess it amounts to the same thing.
-- Warning! Characters I meet downtown are making more sense than "respectable" citizens.

outbound, inbound, and unbound

As soon as something begins to form, it begins to die. Centrifugal.

As soon as form begins inspiriting, it begins to live. Centripetal.

Only the invisible continues to be seen.
Only the intangible continues to touch.
Centrihelical.

geezer bench sip rate

Taking a cup of strong black coffee from Late For The Train to Heritage Square and bench sitting on a coolish windy morning (45 degrees or so), you quickly discern that you must find the exact sipping rate to maintain maximum coffee temperature, as decreased coffee volume due to sipping produces a corresponding increase in rate of coffee cooling. In other words, you are faced with the dilemma (caught between two lemmas) of either sipping faster than you wish or sipping at your normal rate and winding up with half a cup of cold coffee. This is one of the problems we geezers face of which mere mortals have no knowing.

musing on the geezer bench

Idly amusing myself the other day while sitting in Heritage Square in downtown Flagstaff where all us geezers and geeks hang out while others are imprisoned in their work cubicles, I counted eleven major strikes with the hand:

1. heel of hand (upward strike to nose or jaw)
2. first two knuckles of fist (traditional Isshinryu punch)
3. all four knuckles of first joints of fingers (good for loosening another's teeth)
4. index finger supported between thumb & other 3 fingers folded in (good for eyes)
5. thumb knuckle atop fist (side swing into temple or around back into kidney)
6. bottom of fist (downward strike to mid-sagittal suture atop head)
7. chop (excellent for collarbones)
8. back of fist (good nose breaker)
9. thumb tip and finger tips joined for a "peck" strike
10. claps on ears (possible ear drum rupture)
11. spear hand (drive into solar plexus & other assorted areas)

No doubt I am forgetting some. But I had a good time trying them out while sitting on my geezer bench, deep into my guise as a little old white-haired guy sitting in the sun.

L to the 3rd power + D

I no longer feel sadness. Both sadness and its partner anger gone. I am the L triplets: Light, Love, Laughter. The Trio. Of course, they condense and expand according to the level of fatigue. I know fatigue. Fatigue is Death and I am Mister D also. I am Death. An unusual claim. Most everyone wants to be the L triplets. Death is seen as Enemy. No, no. Each of us is Death. You know what Death is? Extreme fatigue. Hahahaha!

The formula of my being is L to the 3rd power + D. I am Death and Light and Love and Laughter. Let me put Mister D in the midst there. Sometimes he feels so all alone. I am Light and Love and Death and Laughter. There. A little better. Light and Love and Extreme Fatigue and Laughter.

Light and Love and Laughter are not of the body. Extreme fatigue is of the body. Death, Mister Extreme Fatigue, is of the body. When the body gives way to total fatigue, there goes Mister Death. Light and Love and Laughter go on their way. So love the Dude up while you have him. He has a hard time. Give him the company of the Light, Love, Laughter you are. He won't be with you long. He has a death to die. You might even miss the Old Coot.