My brother just informed me that our mother has died. Such a strange thing, losing a parent. Shes been on this planet as long as Ive been alive, like the mountains and oceans, like the sky and the stars. But shes no longer here. Life, organic life, is such an oddity in the scheme of things, here forever from other life-forms point of view, then suddenly not, only a husk, only shadows and dust and memories. And those memories are just as transient; when I am gone, everything I know will be lost forever, as well, except for those parts Ive written about and shared - and even those will only last as long as the websites and books and magazines survive. In the larger scheme of things, a momentary eyeblink, even the best-bound fine books. We are all far smaller than we want to believe. We are not Caesar. We are not Napoleon. We are not the Moon, not the Earth, not even a dissipating comet approaching the Sun on an elongated orbit, shedding our skins and bodies against radiation pressure, fighting that energy, fighting our own entropy. Even a comet, doomed far more dramatically than any of us no matter how romantically we believe in our supernova-like shine-and-death, will far outlast any of us. My mother: We had a conflicted, complicated, and long shared experience. She is probably the most important figure in my life, for good or ill. I was her first child, and though she was proud of me and spoke highly of me, she did not understand me nor find comfort in me. I was a difficult child for her, because I will never bend beneath authority, I will never respect that which deserves no respect, I will fight against injustice and privilege and the powers-that-be which feel entitled to the powers they hold. I love humankind. I spread my arms wide and embrace all that we are, not innocent, but eyes wide open and aware of all our faults and imperfections, and I love you, I love you all. And we all die, and in dying we make room for growth and evolution and change. Without change is only death. We might tremble along, holding out our hands against what is to come, pulling against a lifetime of crap, irons around our legs and our arms and our minds. But all we need to do is let them go, let the irons fall away, stand up and step forward into the light. Its blinding, and its from a source we cannot understand, and its all new and different and scary. But its the future, and its the only place we cannot go that is not the grave. Good night.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 01:17:38 +0000
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