Life.Death

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THE title reads: “Life dot Death”. Dot ends Life. Death comes after the dot.

This blog celebrates life as much as the dot intrigues this blogger. So often the dot is used to end a sentence, or abruptly, without warning, cuts short what could or should have been a long, grammatically sensible and complete line.

The dot, misused and/or abused, could end a single word to express a full sentence, e.g., “Life.” Or, “Death.”

Try “Period.”

A staccato of dots does not end a sentence, it leaves it open. Ellipsis does not finish “Life…”, you know. Somehow you expect a lot more words to come and write finis to a possibly long statement… or, thesis. You just have to keep guessing.

A staccato of dots that comes after “life” can qualify as an afterlife of a different concept and context, not the religious one, of course.

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I never realized it until now, but the reason I cling to the religion I was accidentally born into is because of the promise of an afterlife, or heaven, to be exact. I can almost hear Dylan folkrocking: “Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.”

Same goes for the billions of other religious faithful, as they are not able to dissociate the concept of an afterlife with their religion, and thus, with it, the concept(s) of the supernatural, be it a superbeing, super noodles, or super detergent that washes away sins of the world, including the cardinal’s.

Note these "facts": Suicide bombers don’t anymore exist because they now reside in paradise in the company of 72 (yes, it must be 3 in excess of 69) virgins. They killed and maimed and destroyed… in God’s name. Wow! Potential and would-be suicide bombers (they still exist) hold on to their passports issued as promises by the Republic of Afterlife as if their lives depended on those passport-promises. Huh!

I can hear it from "2001: A Space Odyssey" author Arthur Clarke: “Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?”

Btw, I can always blog about the afterlife. Like this: “Life….”. A staccato of dots that comes after “life” can qualify as afterlife, remember?

I can even blog about life as I’m quite familiar with it. With 'ty-nine long years in my resume (that makes me a man with a golden gonad?) that can not possibly make me a stranger to life.

But death? I’m not good at it. I mean, am not good at dying. I can be considered a lucky survivor (or survivalist) as I, in many instances, refused to die, anyway. A few times I cheated death, and at one point had a deathwish. But that’s all there is about “mydeath” that's not much different from “mybike.”

A child can happily babytalk about his/her new toy bike, and as such, shares an aspect about his/her life. A newly acquired toy can mean life to a child. But no way can you expect the child to talk about death, or about afterlife -- let alone the dot.

I can only wish that there’s an afterlife. What’s wrong with wishing? Only that my wish is objectively divorced from any form of religion, freed from the clutches of any dogma, detached from any legacy of the christian Torquemadas, islamic BinLadens, nazi-an Hitlers or even closeted Stalins.

Here, like the child with a new toy, I’m just sharing an aspect about my life, and my thoughts. I’m not sure of the afterlife, though, but when death is inked on my resume, I’m almost certain that such death would figuratively come after the dot, that in turn would only have come after life.

Dot (read: “that’s all he wrote”).