During the course of a day I have roughly ten million thoughts. Whether that's an exaggeration or an estimation is sort of unclear to me. I wish there was a way to make a catalog of my thoughts, pin them down one by one, push pins on a world map. That's why it's sometimes hard to give them form at the end of the day, make a shape of things. It would make as much sense to try and give shape to the ocean. And yet, we have waves, do we not, small signifiers of that great sign behind them.
Quoting:
“Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city”
Epicurus 300 BCE
“We are terrified of future catastrophes and are thrown into a continuous state of misery and anxiety, and for fear of becoming miserable, we never cease to be so, always panting for riches and never giving our souls or our bodies a moment’s peace. But those who are content with little live day by day and treat any day like a feast day.—
Poggio Bracciolini 1416
And the destructive motions cannot hold sway eternally and bury existence forever; nor again can the motions that cause life and growth preserve things eternally. Thus, in this war that has been waged from time everlasting, the contest between the elements is an equal one: now here, now there, the vital forces conquer and, in turn, are conquered; with the funeral dirge mingles the wail that babies raise when they reach the shores of light; no night has followed day, and no dawn has followed night, which has not heard mingled with those woeful wails the lamentations that accompany death and the black funeral –On the Nature of Things—
Lucretius 50 BCE
“We do not go; we are carried away, like floating objects, now gently, now violently, according as the water is angry or calm: Do we not see all humans unaware of what they want, and always searching everywhere, and changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?”
Montaigne 1580
“As you entered it. The same passage that you made from death to life, without feeling or fright, make it again from life to death. Your death is part of the order of the universe; it is part of the life of the world. Our lives we borrow from each other..And men, like runners, pass along the torch of life—
Lucretius 50 BCE
at the instant when a man is mastered by
ReplyDeletethe care free calm of death and forsaken
by mind and spirit, you cannot tell either
by sight or by weight that any part of the whole
has been filched away from the body.
death leaves everything there, ecept vital sentience and warmth.
Notice that three of your speakers wrote, not only BCE, but BEFORE CHRIST!
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