“I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness…”

-H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond

From Le Marche Morte .

Stop motion, face paint: Each frame was hand-painted on the model’s face.

Rot from Erica Luke on Vimeo .

A quote from another forum I frequent that sums up how I feel about death better than I could:

The Tralfamadoreans in Slaughterhouse Five see things much the same was as God sees things in Thomistic theology: The whole universe and everything in it not from instant to instant, but all at once. They see the ripples going out from each life that ever exists as we see the ripples from a handful of pebbles thrown into a small pond.

I think of death, my death, me dying, more as I age. And I spend a lot of time staring into the night sky now that I live in a place of many stars. I am still here to think about it because seat belts work, and copper does not spark, and surgeons are well-trained, and the fire chief hit his brakes some milliseconds sooner than he might have, and any number of other reasons I’ll never know anything about. But one day, I know, in the blink of an eye or a long, slow, fading blur, I will cease to be. All that will be left of me is a mess of molecules and the little bits of memory some few others carry forth into the maelstrom. I hope there will be more good bits than bad.

And eventually the human species will cease to be, and all trace of it disappear, and so the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and so on, and others will come to be and cease to be from the same elements, even as we recycle the stardust of bygone supernovae in our own bodies at this moment. It is a single thing from beginning to end. How odd, how improbable to be in an instant of it all when we have some faint grasp of of the enormity of it, of how it works, and of our minuteness in it. Of course, others have felt this way before, and we may be as wrong as they were….

Unknown artists and title.

From Le Marche Morte .

I was re-watching this bit from IT Crowd and it made me wonder if there were actual sites that predict one’s date of death. And, being the internet, I was not disappointed. Here are a few.

When Will I Die : This one is close to the one on the show with questions about lifestyle and such. The interface is rather boring, but the maths seem sound.

Death Timer : The interface is perfect, and the stats are based on info from the CIA and UN, but it’s based only on BMI.

Death Forecast : A fun little site, which uses more info, like the first link in the list.

Just a warning, the How Will I Die quiz from Quiz Rocket only wants your information to email spam you. Bastards.

‘Still Life Infinite Vanitas’ Kevin Best

As evidenced by the gallery page of Vanitas paintings, I’m rather a fan of the macabre and beautiful still lifes. I find the warmth and depth of the paintings appealing.

Whilst building my gallery page, I came across some modern Vanitas art.  For example, the person who did the piece above,  Kevin Best , does amazing work .

Likewise lovely:

‘Vanitas Symbols’ Jose Picayo
shot on 8″ x 10″ Polaroid film and printed as digital pigment photographs on canvas

‘Vanitas’ Kalico the Kat

Le Taxidermiste from Le Taxidermiste Team on Vimeo .

Hans Holbein the younger. Danse Macabre XI The Queen.

He will follow you, no matter who you are. He will take you, no matter where you go. There is no escape from his grasp, yet you struggle against his grip. death does not take pity nor pause, just your soul.

From Le Marche Morte .

Alexander Mair. Memento Mori, One of Six. 1605

Thanks to Le Marche Morte .

Jacques Gamelin. Surgite Mortui, et Venite ad Judicium. Excerpt from Nouveau Recueil d’Ostéologie et de Myologie. 1779.

Arise, ye dead, and come to the judgment.
-Excerpt from I Thessalonians 4:16

Hat tip to Le Marche Morte .

Albrecht Durer. Death and the Landsknecht. 1510.

via Le Marche Morte .

“My mission is to kill time, and time’s to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.”

–EM Cioran

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

My whole life has been a meaningless search. I say it without bitterness or self-reproach. I know it is the same for all.

Miscellaneous Existentialist Quotes

-001- [Sartre's] basic premise is that writing is a form of action for which responsibility must be taken but that this responsibility carries over into the content and not just the form of what is communicated.
-002- Given the postulated atheism of Sartre’s view, it seemed to follow that individuals were left to create their own values because there was no moral order in the universe by which they could guide their actions, indeed, that this freedom was itself the ultimate value to which one could appeal (as he put it, ‘in choosing anything at all, I first of all choose freedom.’)
-003- Sartre introduced yet another ethical principle when he asserted that in every moral choice we form an image of the kind of person we want to be and, indeed, or what any moral person should be: ‘For in effect, there is not one of our acts that, in creating the man we wish to be, does not at the same time create an image of man such as we judge he ought to be.’
-004- Albert Camus views this as the source of our anguish: we long for meaning conveyed by a Universe that cares but discover only an empty sky.
-005- Camus counsels that our only hope is to acknowledge that there is no ultimate hope. Like the Ancient Stoics, we must limit our expectations in view of our morality.
-006- The mantra of Sartrean humanism, echoed by Camus and de Beauvoir, is that you can always make something out of what you’ve been made into. So the almost proverbial existentialist ‘pessimism’ harbours a deep, if limited, hope.
-007- But what is the philosophy of this generation? Not God is dead, that point was passed long ago. Perhaps it should be stated Death is God. This generation thinks– and this is its thought of thoughts – that nothing faithful, vulnerable, fragile can be durable or have any true power. Death waits for these things as a cement floor waits for a dropping light bulb. The brittle shell of glass loses its tiny vacuum with a burst, and that is that.
-008- We saw Sartre give brief mention to theistic existentialists in his lecture and then proceed to discuss existentialism in terms that seem to exclude or at least discount belief in God. But not all humanism is atheistic—in fact, in a manner analogous to that of Heidegger, theists argue that atheism degrades the true worth of the human being by reducing him or her to a mere product of nature without intrinsic value or ultimate hope. Again, much turns on the kind of freedom or autonomy that the would-be existentialist accords the individual. Atheists claim that such freedom is absolute. Whatever [perfections?] have ascribed to God, they insist, have been gained at their own expense and theology as simply anthropology upside-down, Nietzsche’s thesis about the death of God leads him to advocate a heroic atheim by which one forges ahead like Sisyphus despite the presumed indifference of the Universe.
-009- We saw that, for Camus, we were challenged to make the most of an absurd situation. Sartre would agree with Roquentin that our existence is just a brute fact, that we are superfluous (de trop). And both would subscribe to the Sisyphean concluding line of Sartre’s play No Exit, ‘Well, let’s get on with it.’ Just because there is not ultimate hope does not mean that we are bereft of all hope whatsoever. The wisdom of Sisyphus is not to make the rock stay put but to get the thing off his toe! We are advised to pursue limited but attainable goals—like the Ancient Stoics.
-010- It is humanist dimension of existentialism that comes to grips with the fact of our sheer being there. And it is their respective responses to the questions: ‘Why do we exist?’, ‘Why is there anything at all rather than nothing?’, that distinguish the theists from the atheists among them. Unlike philosophers such as Bertrand Russell who deny that the question is even meaningful, the existentialists, both theistic and atheist, take it quite seriously.
-011- Not that Sartre was a finger-wagging moralizer. Rather, he insisted that each of us acknowledges what we are doing with our lives right now. Like Kierkegaard’s sea caption hesitating to come about while in the meantime the ship continues in its present direction, we are challenged to own up to our self-defining choices; to make them our own and consequently become selves by acknowledging what we are. This is a form of Nietzsche’s prescription to ‘become what you are.’ It’s a matter of living the truth about ourselves, about our condition as human beings. The inauthentic person, in Sartre’s view, is living a lie.
-012- I see it all perfectly, there are two possible situations—one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it—you will regret both. –Kierkegaard
-013- Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realise it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift…that’s nausea. –Sartre
-014- You are free and that is why you are lost. –Kafka
-015- Life must be lived forwards, however, it can only be understood backward. –Soren Kierkegaard
-016- As Dawkins admits: This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. –Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God
-017- William Provine, biologist and historian of science at Cornell: Modern science directly implies that there are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society… We must conclude that when we die, we die, and that is the end of us… Finally, free will as it is traditionally conceived—the freedom to make uncoerced and unpredictable choices among alternative courses of action—simply does not exist… There is no way that the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make moral choices.
-018- What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. – Mark Twain
-019- I’ve always seen life differently from others, and the result has been that I’ve always isolated myself. – Flaubert
-020- The alienated are those who finds the truth, thus, becoming more alienated. – No attribution
-021- To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be. – Anna Louise Strong

Last June [2007] I had my first psychotic episode; during which I tried to kill myself. I know that sounds highly dramatic, but that’s what happened, apparently. I say ‘apparently’ because I have no memory of it. I left work two hours early one day and when my husband came home at 5pm I was nearly unconscious and vomiting profusely from alcohol and pills. I had also been cutting myself. What I remember is going home at 3pm and then being in a hospital bed at 11pm. Then there’s another blank space followed by being at home about twelve hours later. Roughly eighteen hours are missing; though it was a very active eighteen hours. I’m amazed at the thought of being physically present for such a momentous occasion as my near-death while remembering nothing of it. It’s like seeing yourself in pictures in a place where you can’t recall being.

The entire episode is something that puzzles me. It’s been a bit over four months and I’m just starting to get my head round it.

What I’ve been thinking about most (besides how badly I feel at scaring K, my husband, so much) is when people say, regarding death, “At least they didn’t suffer.”

Suffering can only be appreciated from the point of surviving said suffering. If I had died that day I would have had no memory of being crazed or whatever was going on and so it wouldn’t’ve made any difference if my last moments were spent shouting at the universe or quietly meditating. Suffering before death is only important to the people who are still alive. Once you’re dead that’s pretty much it. Whatever pain you are in ceases to be once your heart stops beating. I used to be of the mindset that a person not suffering just prior to death was vastly better than being in horrible pain just before. Now I see that doesn’t matter. This is a good thing and this is why…

I’ve known two people who were murdered. One was killed during a robbery at his workplace and the other was killed in his bed while he slept*. I used to think, “Well, at he least was asleep and had no idea what happened,” and, “Christ, how horrible to know you’re going to die–to spend your last moments fighting and pleading for mercy.” But now I see those thoughts are only tormenting/comforting the living.

In Judaism, the funeral service and shiva are for the living–to support those still alive–not really for the soul of the person no longer of this earth like in Christian ceremonies. The deceased has far better things to be getting on with. I’ve always found wakes and Christian-style funerals to be wrenching to no good purpose, though I can see why some people feel compelled to say goodbye to their loved one. I would not begrudge people wishing to say goodbye to me even though I wouldn’t have been in the room for some time.

Unlike the previous post (a quote from a dear friend) I have no great concept of what happens when one dies other than decomposition to the organic matter from which one came. To me, you get your time on Earth, spend it as you will. When you’re gone some people will remember you kindly and others won’t care one way or another. That’s fine with me. Hopefully no one will be actively glad I’m gone, but if that is the case, I won’t give two shits by that point.

The idea of suffering v. not suffering prior to death not being of any consequence was a real eye-opener for me, as I’ve been socialized to think that one’s last moments are best if they are peaceful. It’s better to go quickly rather than painfully. Now I see that’s more about the living. The people who survive you don’t want to see you suffer–they don’t want their last memories of you to be horrid. Your last memories won’t count for anything because you won’t know about them once you’re on the other side.

You may say: You’d feel different if you’d actually died, but I have. I was clinically dead (drowned) when I was five years old. I remember the drowning, but there was no white light or whathaveyou. That experience was similar. I was swimming, swimming, swimming and then nothing and then I was on the beach, awake and surrounded by people. No breathing or heart-beat for several minutes. Death is a nothingness that happens when it happens. In many ways I find this comforting…

Anyway, just some thoughts I wanted to put out there/down for my future self.

*For those who care–the people who murdered my brother-in-law and my friend have been put in prison.
[This post is from a previous blog. Original post date: 18 October 2007]