Category: Life and Death

art appreciation: thresholds

On By ©️K.T. 2025In art, artists, Crone Consciousness, Death, dying, Finnish, Gnosis, Gnostic, Hospice, Jung, Jungian, kin, Life and Death, liminal, liminality, limineen, spirits, the old gods, threshold, TransistionLeave a comment

first in a series

The Entrance Gate on the far bank of The River Tuoni according to the Kalevala and as depicted by Finnish artist Hugo Simberg

THE ENTRANCE TO TUONELA, 1898,
oil on canvas
Hugo Simberg, 1873-1917
Finland

Tuonela

In this piece, which is an interpretation of one of many universal myths which impart the water crossing and trek we all are to embark upon after death,

most of the departed climb up the steep, barren embankment and enter the tunnel individually, while a child and a dog are tenderly escorted — led by the hand or carried by chthonic monks into the tunnel leading to the

Underworld

the tunnel appears under geological strata — presumably the surface of Earth, with blue sky and forest in background above it

interestingly, the artist’s limited use of perspective also allows the sky and forest to be viewed potentially as the Great Beyond itself — as a Northern or Alpine “paradise,” a Valhalla, beyond the sojourn in and through the tunnel

a high, solid, wooden fence bisects the river, embankment and tunnel and prevents arrivals from observing the exiting monks — only one-way vision and traffic for the dead

and while the monks do not cast shadows, the human figures continue to be accompanied by their shadows; for those who subscribe to Jungian analytical psychology or gnostic texts, the physical shadow depicted may be interpreted symbolically as the anima/animus of the person — which would ultimately disappear during the tunnel upon the full reintegration of the Self/Soul/Spirit

through re-unification with one’s divine twin (which is sometimes also called the cosmic/celestial twin or daimon) after having been separated during human incarnation and birth.

author’s note: 

i often and prefer to call the underworld aka afterlife “The Great Wide Open of the All” — which in my liminal gleanings is a supremely contented blackness of universal consciousness, devoid of thought or sensation — a perfected existence in the dark cosmic fabric of nothingness, 

there may be levels in the afterlife which may manifest our own personal imaginal constructs of paradise — far beyond what our limited sensory perception and experiences of life on Earth are - such as, an Alpine Paradise upon emerging from the tunnel - 

i know full well the breathtaking beauty and feeling upon exiting a scary and lengthy mountain tunnel where my heart and eyes are stunned by a grand vista of forest, peaks and sky — from my many road trips in the Western U.S.

yet, i truly prefer the former — when i die, i want to rest for all eternity — although with just one desire, one sensation: warmth.
Continue reading “art appreciation: thresholds” →

“The crew compartment’s breaking up”

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Climate Acceptance, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Crone Consciousness, Earth hospice, Earthling, earthlings, ecocide, exposition, Funerary, Hospice, Lament, Lamentations, Life and Death, music, planetary hospice, Song, Songs, Space Shuttle ColumbiaLeave a comment

John Roderick wrote the above line and repeats it seven times(!) in his song, “The Commander Thinks Aloud”— about the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster that happened February 1, 2003

and, if I’m not careful, I will start to cry during the first verse


The Commander Thinks Aloud

Boys and girls in cars
Dogs and birds on lawns
From here I can touch the sun


Put your jackets on
I feel we're being born
The Tropic of Capricorn is below


We stall above the pole
Still your face is young
As we feel our weight return


A trail of shooting stars
The horses call the storm
Because the air contains the Charge


The radio is on
And Houston knows the score
Can you feel it, we're almost home

The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
This is all I wanted to bring home to you

Songwriter: John Roderick, The Long Winters


The Commander Thinks Aloud lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Rough Trade Publishing

this song — since the very first time i (belatedly) heard and learned about it on the Song Exploder podcast in 2016 — became an instant melancholic metaphor-lamentation for me, even while retaining it’s very visceral and intended meaning —

at first, for the climate chaos we face on our communal spaceship — Spaceship Earth,

as in, “hey, do you realize we’re floating in space?” — then, why are we [deliberately] destroying the crew compartment?

and

for our lives — for the simplicity that is both stolen and lost

in the daily struggle — of and against exploitation, repression and oppression; in the daily drama of our dis/mis/mal contentment; in the daily, unnecessary grasping, striving, amassing and hoarding — whether for – or of, wealth, land, power, influence, reputation, career, fame, control or privilege —

or, in orbiting the Earth in a shuttle or space station or landing on the Moon in a spacecraft — when we could’ve just been human beings caretaking of this Eden and of each other.

and personally,

Continue reading ““The crew compartment’s breaking up”” →

premeditated mourning

On By ©️K.T. 2025In cancer, Death, dreaming, dreams, dying, Hospice, Life and Death, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

i am in premeditative mourning

desperate to get it
over and done with
before she’s dead

i choke on the dream scene, the prognosis and the grand scheme / ever-present in my throat /
and weep
then, a memory of us wedges in
i cry a smile, and smile a cry

i think
this, is all, too much
i can’t do this.

she is the one doing it
with her dignity, her calm, her reserve, she’s had too much practice, she’s well-traveled on this terrain

these consecutive life sentences, handed out

i am in retroactive outrage
over these injured bodies, injured, not failing,
precision is imperative /
i am in proactive rage
against these failing systems within this failed system in this injured, not failing, closed system /
precision is imperative

does anyone else want to know
the cause/s of death/s
these expendable, collateral clusters — of families, neighborhoods, workers, of an implausible deniability
one after another at four, five or six decades — dead

did he bring home the syndrome
in silica tucked in the creases
of his work clothes
of his brow,
he built the skyline! the Hancock even
my god, did he carry it in his semen

or was it the apartment on wabansia?
on karlov? on keystone?
all zoned mixed-use residential-commercial-industrial — industrial!
when they all walked from home
to work at the factory down the block,
on the next block, or across the alley
a metal plater
a powder coater
a dry-cleaner
tool and die

i don’t want these precognitions anymore!
let me dream her as a grandmother
with her grandchildren, all, all pristine!

i know the outcome
of walking forward in waking fantasy, in empty, unheard prayer, instead of trusting the retrograde revelations of my sleep

Continue reading “premeditated mourning” →

stop praying for what you want

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Death, exposition, Life, Life and Death, limineen, Poem, poetryLeave a comment

the birds’ choir
is a mockery outside my window, eight different species on the sill — eight — for gods’ sake!


these days when the
Sun’s arc is long
and the soil is warming for the season — and permanently

i am in my bed with lead bones
annoyed that i woke up again, and guilty with an ungratefulness about it


my steady lament is sung out loud — but still unheard
i counted my mistakes like sheep, to sleep again
they didn’t wander away though
they stay close to their shepherd, always


they say Death comes in threes and that’s true
but it still hasn’t chosen me
instead, conscripting two complacent men, known to me, thirty-six, fifty three, in one week’s time — why?
while i’m out here volunteering for the cause
it cruelly searches elsewhere to complete their trio


of course i’m still fucking here!
the gods won’t give you what you pray for!

courage, love, fidelity, life, death

they’re full of motherfuckery
they know exactly what i — and what you, want most — of all

so they sent these birds here to taunt me


so they keep me here to taunt you

Continue reading “stop praying for what you want” →

residuum

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Earthling, ki, kin, Life and Death, nature, Poem, poetry, reciprocity, Survival, symbiosity, wildlife, WinterLeave a comment
“The Distances They Keep”, Howard Nemerov, the blue swallows, 1967

this is no time
to evict
centipedes,
spiders,
the occasional, lone
boxelder bug,
dozens of out-of-season ladybird beetles
or
the almost-always odorless stinkbugs

from
our houses

to do so now means certain death, outside

Continue reading “residuum” →

With a tail as big as a kite. With a tail as big as a kite.

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Animals, Beauty, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Death, Funerary, Life and Death, Poem, poeme, poetry, spirit, spirits, Survival, Uncategorized, WinterLeave a comment

she strained her eyes
what is that dark lump
in the road
traveling into her throat

Out she went
sighting the black beauty
from fifty paces
nearer, the bright blood
pooling beneath ki’s face

Did he even try to brake
or swerve?
“no”, the tracks and trees say

Maybe the driver didn’t see
the pitch black, moving body
against the snowy white, otherwise red dirt road?

Maybe ki darted out,
in front of the royal blue truck
a truck fit for a rural king
[doubt of the beneficent on Christmas]

machines
everywhere
machines

carssawsgunsplowsshipsplanesmillstractorsthrowersdozerstruckscombines
boatsturbinesrigsdredgerstrainsbargesroadsrailharborspipeshousesbridges
wellshighwayssewersstructuresquarriesreactorspowerlinesstreetslotsculde
sacsfencessatelliteslockscelltowerssignsculvertswallsdockslandfillsdams

she gently pincers the end of ki’s gorgeous black tail
gingerly pulling kin off the road
redundantly committing ki’s spirit
to the universe, aloud
with apologies for humankind, silently

purposefully committing kin’s body
to a safer spot
for mourning
and carrion feast

Ki’s body was unexpectedly heavy
full of walnuts and seeds
fat and strong for a long winter ahead
so alive just minutes ago, I saw out the window

I’m sorry
I’m sorry
for me
for my kind
for our machines
for our structures
for our carelessness
for our selfishness
for all this,
engineered, manufactured, destroyed

the falling snow christens quick

she wanted to go inside
and sob
selfishly,
because the possibility
of an aberrantly painless holyday
ceased with the dead black squirrel Continue reading “With a tail as big as a kite. With a tail as big as a kite.” →

Famêlée

On By ©️K.T. 2025In C.G. Jung, Carl Jung, Exegesis, Gnosis, Jung, Jungian, Knowledge, Life and Death, Mother, Ode, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Samsara, Spiritive, Transistion, Word, WordsLeave a comment

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This feels like an arrow
Made from a tree
That rose from
An acorn
That I gathered and stored
In another life

Scribed with a message continually
piercing my heart

I wasn’t only wounded though,
I was woke
into a clarity
that I was already sighting in my dreams,
writing with words
mortal and eternal

You once said, proclaimed or whispered
Every single thing
that I ever believed
My own truths embarrassed in the shadow of your confidence
My inner voice silenced in your animated persuasion
Believing you so completely – for the better of my years
Becoming like and unlike you because of it,
but not be-coming me,
Un-be-coming me every day

I ain’t even mad
You don’t know this – still,
You don’t want
to hear,
or listen;

Our time is running out
Even this admission
Is sure to haunt me one day,
and guilts me today

But I can’t call you confidant or crone
If you refuse to learn,
to evolve,
From this one archetype

The wide and long view
seems to escape you
You live in the moment in the least way, the worst way
And I don’t worship here or there, any more
The faith in your godliness is gone,
It is unfamiliar
For me to pity you
You, deaf and tone deaf

You had all the answers
In the morning shallows, perhaps
But evaporation revealed even those
Were anchor-less, yet stationary
An algae
Mucking up the colorless perfection of sunlit water

But in the deep, or dark, or quiet pools, you were always so lost
And in the ocean, at night
You drown even in its calm
You have ridden civil swells and storms,
I’ll give you that
But have you ever communed with waves
Allowing them to be part of you
Swallowing and absorbing the mystery
Becoming the colorless perfection of dark water

You seem to stay parched
Your belly’s hollow from impious fasting and pious thirst
You do know that’s where your heart sits?

But let’s agree to come around again, friend
We’ll swap places and next time
I’ll be the mother,
and the son,
and the husband,
and the elder,
and the babe,
and the foreign one,
I’ll become The Other One
because,
I want the chance to know
You

 

Wanderten Mutter

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Death, Estrangement, Frau, Funerary, Hospice, Immigrant, Immigrants, Life and Death, Mother, Mutter, Parents, Stoic, Terminal Illness, Transistion, William BlakeLeave a comment
“Lief heim ins Seitelein.” Unitätsarchiv, R.20.E.36.12. Archiv der Brüder-unität, Herrnhut. http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3.schuchard “Lief heim ins Seitelein.” Unitätsarchiv, R.20.E.36.12. Archiv der Brüder-unität, Herrnhut.
http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3.schuchard

My life seems long, I know
My body’s mostly worn
Inside, she’s just begun to live, again
A girl gone long ago

There are bottled laughs to voice aloud
New smiles to wear with these old shoes
Time to know the world, and you, and you, and you …
between these walls of peeling, muted hues

Once Herr died
My Self was ready to return
My cadence so shy and slow,
Lamenting the awkward waste of precious years

I find my voice as I write the past,
But in my book, the Tomorrow has no page
Forever winter approaches from within
These years and years upright on hard chairs

Unreal, unseen, unheard, untouched
by the world, by the womb, it may concern, Whom
I speak through and then beyond this pain of bone and life
Before the cold within brings silence of the tomb

You see, to me, my presence still feels warm, and blush
somehow, even new
My life stretched out behind me, no steps ahead
And I forestall Death’s cue, awaiting mere glimpse of you

If you can imagine, child
I love, unsaid,
I feel as just alive, as real, as you.

Gnostic Gospel of Transition

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Death, dying, Existence, Father, Gnosis, Gnostic, gospel, Home, Hospice, Life and Death, liminal, liminality, Parents, Pleroma, Poem, poetry, Terminal Illness, threshold, transitionLeave a comment

All light

That’s what you are

That’s what you always were

But, you’ve got to move on, now

Ready to go home, true.

They’re waiting for you.

All light,

I promise; it’s alright

Continue reading “Gnostic Gospel of Transition” →