What Are You Doing?

I am writing an article on werewolf mice and it is hard going on a Friday afternoon.

 

I'm currently watching Netflix--Spartacus: Vengeance. It's pretty good.

 

Used to love that show! Was very sad when Andy Whitfield got sick and they paused production for a while but then he passed and they had to replace him. The show was still good but always felt like it was missing something without the original lead.

 

The death of Andy Whifield still haunts me. If he can die in such a fashion, then the rest of us have no chance.

 

We never really did. Death is the one sure thing in life, and we never know when or how it will take us. We just don't realize it when we're young, or like to think about it even when we're not. Certain tragic moments force us to think about it though.

 

Chadwick Boseman hit hard too. I just try to remind myself that death is what gives life meaning.

 

I understand exactly what you mean, and not to wax pedantic, but I would say death gives life urgency, maybe poignancy, but it's what we do with life that gives it meaning.

Ok, probably being a bit too pedantic, sorry.

 

Perhaps I'm not young enough or involved enough in popular culture to be deeply affected by the deaths of actors and singers. (No, I'm not criticizing anyone for feeling the loss of a favorite entertainer, just adding my two cents to the conversation.) Somewhere along the line, I learned the difference between grief that belongs to me and grief that doesn't, and how to deal with the latter appropriately. Empathy aside, there exists a type of person who gets satisfaction out of vicarious grief over a tragedy that is not his or her own: all the weeping and wailing with none of the genuine pain. One runs into those people on the job as well as in private life, and they are invariably an impediment to what needs to be done.

 

Same. Often when people are lamenting I'm thinking how amazing it is that the person in question managed to do what they apparently loved with their life and was very well known for it. I usually take the death of a famous person I admire as a cause for celebrating their life and accomplishments, and I'm glad that now there will be a great deal of attention focused on them for a while.

Now if an actor or musician or writer I really like dies before finishing their life's work—before their time as it were—I'm often sad because I and their other fans won't be able to read the books they're now unable to write, or hear the songs they won't be able to make now, but that's more of a selfish sadness. But if they lived a rich full life and died in old age or after finishing their career, then I see that as a good and honorable death, and who could ask for a better one?

I also like the belief (shown in one of the Roger Moore Bond movies) of using a funeral not to mourn but to celebrate the life of the person with music and dancing and singing. But there is a need to mourn as well. Maybe there should be 2 funerals. Heh, as Tony Stark might say, a funeral and then a fun-eral.

 

Death is not a terrible thing. Funerals aren't for the dead, the dead don't know or care about anything anymore (depending on your beliefs concerning what happens after death). Funerals are for the living so they can get closure, mourn, and eventually get it out of their system and begin to move on.

I don't fear death at all, though I hope it doesn't come too soon. I fear terrible pain or crippling injuries a lot more, and the pain and fear that usually precedes death. And honestly thanks to stoicism I've learned to accept even great pain and injury etc as things that can't be changed.

Stoicism begins with dividing life into 2 categories—things you have control over and things you don't. ​

There's absolutely no point in lamenting or freaking out or getting angry about things you can't control, like the weather or getting hit by a car or many other things. Once it's happened your best option is to adjust to the new reality and live with it.

 

The deaths of people in my own life obviously have a way larger impact on me but grieving a death (any death for that matter but in this case of entertainers I enjoy/respect/look up to) is certainly real and not void of authenticity. Grief "belonging" to someone seems a bit silly although I can appreciate why you're saying that. Humans are emotional, so be it.

 

Some more so than others. And I mean, I'm not cold and emotionless at all. In fact I almost always cry at movies, sometimes watching a commercial if it's touching. But I never feel a deep attachment to people I don't know personally. Though I am respectful about it. Human life (and animal life for that matter) has great value and its end is never trivial, but I won't put on a show of grief unless I really feel it. For those who feel it for artists/performers they like, I appreciate that and respect it.

 

This seems contradictory. But alas, we've derailed this thread enough and it's getting late.

What am I doing? Going to sleep!

 

Yep, People are strange contradictory creatures.

G'nite!

 

I need a hit of the sea from time to time. I think it’s some primal Neolithic urge left over from our ancestors. This is the little bay next to the pub we ate at.

 

You are not alone. I don't know if you've ever read Moby Dick, but I have.

Several times in the low double digits.

Opening paragraphs support my opinion:

spoiler wrapped for length alone

Spoiler

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time tozz get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster— tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues,— north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among tiger-lilies—what is the one charm wanting?— Water— there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

 

Thank you for sharing this, Iain.

 

Beautifully put, and no, I’ve not read the book. The chef Rick Stein talks of this ‘desire’ for the sea.

 

Yes. That’s a frog on the side of my house with a dead mosquito stuck on its head. I don’t know how that happened, and the frog appears to not be eating the thing. It’s literally just chilling with a dead insect on its head giving zero ‘effs.

 

Doing some book ordering and reading the reviews on Publishers Weekly.

Came across some pretty negative reviewers too.... PW described one book as a "disappointing debut" and said anothers plot was "plodding"

Sheesh! Id be mortified to read the reviews of my (hopefully) future book(s) if i had that person as a critic

 

My mental health requires me to revisit this every so often. It will NEVER get old. Old Simpsons was pure genius.

 

I am trying valiantly to not take a nap. Last night I went to bed about 1 a.m., slept fitfully, got up at 6:30 a.m., worked a full day, talked to three dozen people, drove out to the vet's to get dog medicine, came home to relax and water roses and we got a thunderboomer with some fair to middling impressive lightning. Now it is 8:20 p.m. and I am trying to make it another two hours before falling into bed. Ugh. Evenings are challenging.

 

we got that last night, pretty damn loud. Or so I'm told, I never woke up.

 

Okay. Made it through the evening without a nap and now despite running on about 5.5 hours sleep, I am wide awake and ready to get to work on my manuscript.

 

Nice.

I’m counting down the hours for the weekends. Just surfing the net, mainly. xD