Is it just me, becoming more attenuated to noticing random testaments to our fallen, or are there more of these memorials outside of cemeteries sprouting about the Southern Californian wastelands?
I can’t tell.
Were they always as prevalent as they seem to be now? Did I simply not notice them before my descanso filters grew in intensity? To be honest, I’m thinking for whatever reason, folks are more inclined these days to mark a tangible honorarium beyond standard funerary customs. If I’m right, and that’s a big ‘if,’ what’s prompted the increase in need?
I don’t think folks are dying anymore often than in days of future past. Is it a cascade effect, in that the more people see extraneous testaments about their communities and their travels, the more they’re likely to do it themselves when they incur a personal loss? We monkey-brains do so love to emulate each other, and surely that copycat impulse is more fervent when it concerns the death of someone we love.
I don’t know.
Case in point. Earlier this week, I’m walking beachfront, mindin’ my business, definitely not searching for any writing prompts or existential quandaries, and bang boom blammo kapow, there’s a lovely surfcat style shrine at my feet, outta the blue, all by its lonesome. It had a central stone adorned with a custom plaque and metal butterflies, and a couple of accompanying painted stones, all honoring one Tanyia Bognar. The plaque paraphrased a stanza from the song Drops of Jupiter, originated by the band Train, perhaps more famously covered by a certain phenomenon titled Taylor Swift:
“I hope you get the chance to dance along the light of day and head back towards the Milky Way.”
It was a lovely sentiment, of course. I stopped and took a beat to honor Tanyia, and wished her fair travels in the upper spheres, as has become my custom, it seems.
That’s kinda what I’m saying today, I guess. The impact, the footprint, the frequent marking of all these decedents I never knew personally, it’s changed me a bit. Maybe more than a bit. It’s, well…I dunno if I have the proper words, and as you loyalists know, I’m all about the wordy-words. It’s ramped up my connection to the All-Oneness, obviously. It’s both strenghthened and weakened my abilities to absorb the big bad world. As is often the case, emotional evolution does come with a price, which is why so many people choose to put off that necessary step up the ladder of sapience. As long as my chi is still stuck in this stardust and water shell, I fear the cost of advancement might prove too much to bear.
Does that justify an avoidance of our collective aspirations to connect to all creatures of light (in this sphere or another)?
Is the price too high?
Is it not worth the wear and tear on the soul?
I don’t know.
What I do know is, plenty of asylums and sanitariums and long term psych wards house many a broken soul, and many a brave soul, intellectual explorers who dared reach past their compartmentalized sectors of everyday perceptions, people who pushed the envelope so far it ripped, tumbling them into a place where reason and logic could no longer hold back the raw power of emotional tempest.
It sounds grandiose when I put it like that; I am, after all, prone to the hubris of grandeur. Still, I don’t think I’m wrong about emotional footprints and their cumulative effects on our psyches. However, I don’t think the potential cost is worth kicking the can down the road. In every system requiring adaptation to change, there’s a whole lot of sacrifices to be made by individuals and societies alike.
Nobody wants to be part of a generation that eats shit for the sake of future generations. Yet many generations do exactly that, be it a young crop of worldwide men who died in World War II or Zoomer kids who came of age during a pandemic.
Will the sanity of the folks who first breach the shores of higher consciousness and greater goods have to be tended to? Probably. Is there another way up the ladder with less consequences? Probably. Have we humans taken the best possible road in that regard, in terms of our ability to reconcile our primordial roots with our higher consciousness? Probably not.
Luckily, it’s my best edjumucated guess that it all gets sorted out in the higher spheres.
Yep, even Nazis and their shortsighted mindsets get sorted out, I figure.
How that might occur, contrasted with the pain and horror of corporeal limitations, I haven’t a clue. I’m just a barely evolved simian, same as you.
Apologies, Tanyia. Got off on a tangent there. All the same, I’m willing to bet big bucks that you did indeed get a chance to dance along the light of day, and that you did indeed head back into the Milky Way…and beyond.
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