As for mortality, I suppose I’m a bit Spinozaesque, but ultimately I find comfort in the idea that I’ll transform. I recently watched a special on Aspergers on NG and it featured a guy who could cite dates with ease, no matter what the time span was, past or future. He claims that he doesn’t compute the days but rather gets a feeling for them; that he understands them as the days line up with the years in his mind. I get a similar feeling about eternity and/or mortality, that it’s just another form of being in the universe and that I ‘line up’ with it in whatever state. If I were a theist, I’d liken it to being within the body of God and simultaneously being God itself. In any case, the universe suffices nicely as a linguistic reference…and if we’re talking about an expanding and collapsing cyclical universe, then that more intuitively adheres to my conception of eternity.

We want to me immortal materially. We want to be who we are. And better. Forever.

I’ve been trying to reach a notion, a new thought, a free idea, as beautiful as music or mathematics, about death.

There must be something above materialism and spiritualism.

I’ve written an essay about all that… yearning. Perhaps you might find something interesting.

It is here:

http://materialimmortality.blogspot.com/

I have learned a lot from you, Rudy. Thanks. Ever.

I’ve heard this so often from the gifted people I know: there seems to be a membrane that separates even the most articulate of them from the rest of the people in their lives.

Those who can’t come to terms with that membrane become its victims (one young man I knew almost drank himself to death because of the loneliness he felt inside his “invisible skin”). The others can become the grateful receivers of its blessings.

It sounds to me as though you’ve learned to convert your experience of this membrane into your many artistic interests – literary writing (I understand you write poetry as well?) photography (at this point I’d put you on par with anyone in the galleries) and painting (at which you get better by the year).

Perhaps it’s really an interface between the known (yourself) and the unknown (others)… or if you see it from a Zen point of view, between the illusory and the directly experienced.

That’s what I feel when I look at your photos.
Like ideas peel away and what’s left is almost a first principle.

Something that calls neither for explanation or defense.
It stands as its own truth, one common to (the?) all.

It calls to mind something I read in The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Photographs make what’s hidden in plain sight visible for those who may not have the courage to see the obvious.

The photo through the barn door made a nice compliment to your discussion about…. well about everything you discussed in this entry. Thanks, it was beautiful. Real. Bittersweet.

My own life experience tells me that a person cannot live life well until he/she can embrace the inevitability of death. It’s only when I am fully aware that my life must end that l participate in it fully and responsibly. When that happens I can feel profound fear and not be vulnerable to control by (or try to assert my control over) an outside agency. I’m not saying I can accomplish that all the time. I’m just saying that for me I’m really living when I’m dancing in the light with Death.

I’ve experienced this numerous times in my life cycle, when my health problems or the health problems of my immediate family members put everything that concerns me in stark perspective.

ps. Keep doing the talks and recording and posting them. I listen to them!

By the way, I really like the photos you include in your posts.