@shikai-the-storyteller / shikai-the-storyteller.tumblr.com
I have an end-of-life patient to whom I spoke today. She burst out laughing and said, "It was all such fun. I just had so much fun." I wish this for everyone. I wish that we each would meet death laughing, with little regret and even less fear.
if you’re ever in the position to choose between giving up and accepting defeat, and actually trying to fight the ancient unkillable god that is about to peel apart reality like a string cheese, remember this: scientifically speaking, you might as well give it a shot!
1.there were trees at the beginning of the world! there were trees so long ago that they predate bacteria that causes wood to decay. when a tree fell, it would lie there in stasis and there wasn’t any way of breaking down wood xylem on a molecular level in that way.
2. it seems obvious to say, but wood eating bacteria are literally incapable of comprehending what they’re breaking down. It’s just not information conciously available to a microorganism. they don’t know what they’re deconstructing, where it came from, bacteria have no way to even fathom the existence of a tree as a concept.
3. Regardless of the facts above, the world we live in today is a world where wood inevitably decomposes
it is worth fighting the unkillable god no matter how pointless it seems. it is worth taking the risk even though youre trying to accomplish something impossible. the reality in which you live was also once reality in which trees didn’t rot. You live in a reality that allows for existence before the possibility of destruction. you live in a reality where uncomprehending microbes break down matter that is so far beyond the scope of their comprehension that it feels comical to specify something so obvious. you live in a reality that occasionally allows unshakeable physical truths to be altered with no warning.
It is worth fighting the unkillable god because trees are so old they predate the source of their destruction, and it still did not spare them. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because bacteria rots unthinkingly, because there is room in our cosmos for destruction without comprehension on the part of the destroyer. It is worth fighting the unkillable god because now and then reality retracts the promise of immortality without fanfare, and when that happens there is no mercy for the ancient. the unmaking is not softer for the desecrators ignorance. for all things, existence is endless until the exact point where it ends.
so you might as well try to kill the unkillable god. it doesn’t seem likely, but at the beginning of the world, trees didn’t rot. so you never know! you never know
My dreams haven't really been subtle lately.
In the late summer of 2018, an orca whale named Tahlequah swam around the Pacific Ocean carrying the corpse of her dead calf under her fin. The calf had died a few hours after its birth. Tahlequah was first spotted attempting to push it toward the edge of the Pacific Ocean between the United States and Canada before deciding to just carry the calf with her, which she did for over two weeks. Observers and scientists called it a “tour of grief.” The length of mourning was—to that point—unprecedented. It was always a question of letting go. If the whale let her calf go, it would sink to the bottom of the ocean and become a memory. Once, I had a conversation with a poet who also lost their mother. As we charted out our shared grief, the poet told me something they had learned from another poet. “Well, we have two mothers,” they began to tell me. “The one we keep with us in our hearts, and the corpse we can’t put down.” There is the putting down of the metaphorical corpse, and then there is the carrying of the physical, but the hesitation to part with both comes from a similar place. A mother who has lost a child carries with her not only the corpse of that child, but the potential for what that life could have been. I mourn both the actual body and the potential for the whole person it held. How much better my time in the world could have been spent with all of the once-living people I’ve loved, still here. The drawn-out funeral, or the pictures on the wall, or the remembrances yelled into a night sky are all a part of that carrying. It is all fighting for the same message: holding on to the memory of someone with two hands and saying, I refuse to let you sink.
— Hanif Abdurraqib, from “On Going Home as Performance,” in A Little Devil in America
a journey of pain, growth and persistence
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled (Lover Boys)” / James Crews, “15. (Fan Letter)”, The Book of What Stays
“everything is going to be alright. Ok, Fit?”
did you let me die in your arms in the timeloop
I keep thinking about this post. Did you let me? As in did you not save me? and Did you let me? as in did you allow me the comfort of your embrace at the expense of your own pain, knowing tomorrow I would be back and fine but you’d still be feeling my blood against your skin?
Did you let me die in your arms?
it's amazing how ordinary objects can become so significant to only the owner
when my aunt's best friend passed away, my younger brother was four years old. at his funeral, my brother went up to her and gave her a nickel. he told her very solemnly that it would make her feel better. she smiled for the first time in days, and tucked it in her wallet.
when my brother was 22, his best friend passed away unexpectedly. my aunt drove three hours to be there for him at the funeral. she went up to my brother, gave him a big hug, and then gave him a nickel. it was the same nickel; she had kept it in her wallet for 18 years, and now it's on a necklace that he never takes off.
what i'm trying to say is that the love you put into the world will always find its way back to you.
ik how reviving looks in a game but imagine irl if you died in battle and then wake up 5 minutes later to your healer mage going "chop chop let's go you're not done here! finish killing that guy" like thanks for unbreaking my bones but jeez
me with my life flashing before my eyes: mourn for m-
the guy casting resurrection: no time for that, get the fuck up harry
one thing about orpheus and eurydice is you guys are all like “i’m different i wouldnt turn to look at her” because you are all familiar with the story of orpheus and eurydice. but orpheus wasnt familiar with the story because he was in it lol.
“i wouldn’t look back bc logically if she’s not there it wouldnt help to look and if she is there looking back would cause me to lose her” cool so has love never made you stupid and insane
another thing thats interesting is i think most people assume its a walk of reasonably short length that you have to resist looking back. but we dont know how long that walk was. its out of the underworld, time could work very differently. could be days. could be months. could you walk for months without looking back to see if your love is okay? i dont think you could
exactly. like oh you’re not going to look back? have you never lost a love? there is so much looking back.
“Death is a rare mercy” Alright folks, time to add a new quote to the list of things that go hard and sound like they’re from classic lit, but actually come from unexpected places
The fact that humans can be killed through physical means is so ridiculous to me
Like this sounds wild but like. hear me out. a person is such a ridiculously infinitely complicated web of thoughts and feelings and beliefs and such an unbelievably huge amount of knowledge and the idea that you can destroy that by holding a pillow over someone's face for three minutes is absolutely surreal. The idea that you can remove knowledge and emotion and memory from the world with a physical object is literally unbelievable. people are literally infinitely huge and complex and the fact that you can kill the person by killing the body is wild. I'm sure this is incoherent but I hope you get it
It's like. Imagine you threw a fist-sized rock at the empire state building and the entire thing and everything inside it collapsed into dust. That's what the existence of human death feels like
maybe if I keep telling the story, it will never have to end. that way I can keep you alive. If the story lasts forever, so will you. yes, you die in the end. yes I am the only one who remembers. yes I am the only one who knows. But if I never say it aloud, maybe you won't die. maybe this time orpheus won't turn around. maybe peter won't deny him. maybe when I reach the end, you will have had time to come up with a clever solution and escape. maybe this time we survive it together. and the next time, you can tell this story with me. maybe everyone survives and we don't have to tell the story at all. maybe they don't. if I never finish, I'll never have to know. let me speak for a little bit longer. let me live in a world that you are also in for just a moment more. sometimes your memory feels like a noose. I'm sorry. I'm not ready for you to die
