Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon<\/p>\n
Yesterday death came to call.\u00a0 Dizziness and nausea took over my body while my mind raced back to October, 1964, trying to inhabit, again, the mind of my mother as the stroke hit her, trying to imagine the transition from vitality to powerlessness, wondering what thoughts came to her as she fell to the floor in the basement of the United Methodist Church.\u00a0 Pushing this thought back, far from me, get thee behind me death, I wondered if she had done the same, imagined that this was like all the other times, a bit more severe than most perhaps, but surely something that would lift.\u00a0 It didn’t.\u00a0 She died a week later.<\/p>\n
Death had come to call on me as a reminder of the future in the guise of a dark moment of the past.\u00a0 All that work on Latin, I thought.\u00a0 Then, just as quickly, would you have done something else?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 The answer is no.\u00a0 At that moment a peace settled over me, if this was my time, so be it.\u00a0 It’s just fine.\u00a0 If not, I’ll get downstairs and study my i-stem nouns and ablatives.<\/p>\n
Then, today, in a lecture, Nietzsche posed a hypothetical:\u00a0 What if a demon came to you and said, “You will live and relive your life.\u00a0 All of it.\u00a0 The pains and the sorrows, the joys and accomplishments, all of it, even this visit from me.\u00a0 And you will relive it not only once, but over and over.”\u00a0 What is your response?\u00a0 If you can say, Thank you, oh divine one, then you have lived an authentic life and have come to rest with who you are.\u00a0 Nietzsche called this the myth of eternal recurrence.<\/p>\n
I find I’m on the Thank you side of the demon question.\u00a0 Yes, I’d like another helping please.<\/p>\n
Much of my attitude toward life seems to have its roots in Nietzschean thought.\u00a0 Strange that I’m just now discovering this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon Yesterday death came to call.\u00a0 Dizziness and nausea took over my body while my mind raced back to October, 1964, trying to inhabit, again, the mind of my mother as the stroke hit her, trying to imagine the transition from vitality to powerlessness, wondering what thoughts came to her as she … Continue reading Death Came Calling<\/span>