Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?

[poliphilo]

I've got a birthday coming up. It's not a round figure one, so I'm not making a deal of fuss. Actually, even if it was a round figure one I'd want to keep things low-key. Once you're past 50 the only birthday that's worth jumping up and down about is your 100th.

I used to take my body for granted. Now I'm acutely aware of its frailty.

And its unreality.

So what is it? A column of water stiffened with carbon and calcium and other elements. Or, as Webster put it, "a little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste."

It ain't me.

(Babe)

It's this thing I'm using while I work my passage through this heavy dimension. It's like a space suit or a diving suit. If I'm lucky it has another 20 or 30 years wear in it.

We'll see. But every birthday brings it closer to systems failure and the awfully big adventure.

Detachment, that's the thing to be working at when you get past 50. I like it here, but I'm hoping they won't have to pry my fingers loose at the end.

I had a flying dream last night. I said, "look, this is how it's done," spread my arms like dicky-bird wings and took off for the ceiling.

Can't do it now, but one day maybe.

Something to look forward to.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe I read that book. I remember an account of dead Pike stumbling around in the psychic fog, getting very angry because he was a bishop and this shouldn't be happening to him.

I think it would be very confusing if we arrived on earth with all our past-life memories intact.

Kipling has a story (The Finest Story in the World) about a little bank clerk who goes into trances and remembers lives sailing with Odysseus and Eric the Red. Then he falls in love with a tobacconist's assistant and the new emotions wash away his past-life memories.

Kipling as narrator concludes- "Now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is that we may not remember our first and most beautiful wooings. Were this not so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years."

Some people claim to be able to access their past lives. They're usually the same people who were never anything less glamorous than an Egyptian princess or an eye-witness to the crucifixion.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Here's an interesting pre-birth story.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Here's another interesting story:

Don and Terri met a little later in life, but agreed that they didn't want to wait before having children. Terri became pregnant on their wedding night. An ultrasound taken several months later showed that without a doubt she was carrying twins. The pregnancy was making Terri very ill, and Don was worried about her health. He feared that she might lose the babies, but he was also more frightened that he might lose her as well. One night, he woke up and looked toward the bedroom door. A light was shining in the hall, but he remembered that he and Terri had shut everything off before coming to bed. The light grew in brilliance as it came down the hall, then turned into their bedroom. Within the light was a young man wearing a white robe. He came and hovered next to the bed and looked at Don. "Dad," he said. "My sister and I have talked it over, and decided that she will come first. It'll be better for Mom this way. I'll come in about two years." Don turned to wake up Terri, but when he turned back, the figure and the light were gone. The next day, Terri miscarried one of the babies she was carrying. The other twin suffered no trauma and was born at full term, healthy, red-haired - and a girl. Twenty-one months later, Terri gave birth to a boy with red hair exactly like his older sister's.

(From here.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Strange....

I don't know what I think. I find the cutesiness a little off putting.