Tag Archives: passing away

Turn and face the change

The liquid-eyed poet John Keats, dead at 25 from tuberculosis: “There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music.” In the same vein, from an old hymn often sung at funerals I presided over when I was in religious life: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, / Bears all its sons away; / They fly forgotten, as a dream / Dies at the opening day.” No-one and nothing stay the same. Not even for an instant.  

I am. Full stop

I cannot say, “I am the body.” That is because I am not the body. Neither am I a Volvo C30, even though I drive one. Bodies and cars—they come and go, along with everything else. So the question is, What doesn’t change?

A dance, in the gloaming

Happiness is the readiness to die, the awareness that living is dying and that without death, there is no beauty, no sweetness.

Oh, what a world! Sex is out of the closet, death is under the bed.