I have been remiss in my blogging. Apologies all around. I've been journaling, rather than blogging, sitting in coffee places and pouring out my soul into my palm.

Here are a few entries...

Mortality

What is it about mea and death? At the organizing meeting for Leather Pride Night, the group was sort of reeling fromt he death of one of their number, a man I knew only slightly. Yesterday, I learned that an employee of the old job passed away yesterday.

Y'know, I feel nothing. Not the pain of loss, not a shiver at the memento morii. It's almost as if I'd received news that someone was relocating to Oslo.

I'd like to point out that I don't believe in an afterlife of any kind. No medieval conception of heaven, no reincarnation, no surviving cosmic energy.

Although I've never been in a situation where I thought, "this is it, this is the end of me," when the risk of death increased (a mugging, airplane engine trouble, '80s HIV scares), it wasn't the end of life that got to me but the possibility of the end of enjoying life. Suffering people I find compelling (especially when they bear suffering with grace and dignity).

Before I was old enough to drink legally, I attended the funerals of four uncles, one aunt, four grandparents, one mother, and one step mother. If my family decided to have a family reunion we could all go in one car. In fact, it occurred to me years ago that given the fact that my only surviving sibling is fifteen years my senior, I'll probably spend the last decade(s) of my life with no family other than some second or third cousins in Texas and South Carolina.

Relatives of course, aren't replaceable. Literally speaking. I've lost my sister, and she's gone forever, never to be repaced. I do have many wonderful, close relationships, but with Kathy went a set of experiences that only she and I shared. And, she knew me in a way that no one else did. In solving the great karmic riddle, she has a lot of insight that I'll now never know. A selfish way of looking at it, perhaps, but ultiimately, all of our journeys are solitary. Perhaps that's why friends, and even just people I know socially, have always played such a significant role for me. A sort spreading out my emotional investment portfolio. Am I just avoiding intimacy because of the fear of loss? Yeah, maybe. But I've had some truly intimate, moving, transformative experiences (and conversations) with people I've known for all of an evening.