"Oh look! I took it too far!"

I really didn't think I was on my death bed! So don't criticize me for having this idea of death... appreciation for life... and now the after-life on the brain. It's just coincidental and timely that all of these things happened to reach my vicinity all within the same couple of days!

First, I came across this lovely poem today which got me thinking about the things I love in this life and the things which will be essentially part of who I am now and forever. There are certain things that are just fundamentally Lindsey. I am reminded of these things when I go to the ranch. I like to make lists that reground me, and those lists consist of the things that are essentially me. When I feel myself slipping one way or another, I bring out this list and figure out which of these things I am missing. Writing. Not what I write on my blog, but what I write to myself when I'm my most honest Lindsey.

Writing in the Afterlife

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulfurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.

Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.

I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.

I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed

that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible--
not just the water, he insists,

rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles--
and that our next assignment would be

to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us--

think of it more as an exercise, he groans,
think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,

bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.

Billy Collins

And though not exactly related (but it is related because this is my mind... welcome!), I got thinking about how Merideth would always reassure me when I'd come in for weekly lessons that my diligence with the violin was an eternal diligence, not just earthly. "We read in the scriptures that trumpets will sound and horns will usher in the second coming of Christ as we are resurrected and raised up into immortality and eternal life. Let me ask you something: have you ever heard someone play the trumpet in a sacrament meeting? Or a horn? NO! You haven't! And there's a reason for that. No one wants to hear the harsh and imposing sound of a horn interrupt their spiritual Sunday experience! It certainly wouldn't be heaven for me if it were filled with the sound of a thousand trumpets! You better believe there'll be violins to play in heaven. And you'll be playing one of them!"

Also, I found myself reading a little story at my parents' house about all the dogs that die that go to dog heaven and have children to play with and big clouds to sleep on. What a nice little book, don't you think?