{"id":1045,"date":"2008-07-26T15:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-26T15:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1045"},"modified":"2008-07-26T15:27:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-26T15:27:00","slug":"death-no-longer-entrances-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1045","title":{"rendered":"Death No Longer Entrances Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I did not have time to cruise the whole INATS-West show three weeks ago<\/a>, but I did walk through the big Llewellyn booth<\/a>, since it was close by my friends’ booth.<\/p>\n

I scooped up some of the free stuff, including a flier for “a Gothic Book of the Dead.<\/a>“<\/p>\n

It’s one of life’s little ironies that I missed the whole Goth movement by just a few years. I would have been perfect for it.<\/p>\n

I had the look: Tall, slim, dark hair, green eyes, and pale skin — if I stayed out of the Colorado sun, which I did not do. (Being pale in Portland, Oregon, was pretty easy, however.)<\/p>\n

I tended to wear vests and silk scarves, and at age 17 had a seamstress friend sew me a cape — grey with black lining, which fell somewhere between Elvish and Army of Northern Virginia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In my late teens and early twenties, I liked to take long walks at night, even through cemeteries. (Living near Portland’s Mount Scott cemetery complex<\/a> was a bonus during my junior year at Reed<\/a>.) I wrote poetry and thought that the Arnold Bocklin type font<\/a> was the coolest. You get the picture.<\/p>\n

Moving (unknown to me) towards Paganism, which I formally adopted the summer that I turned 21, I might have been attracted to suggestions on how to benefit from a book that discussed, “Meditating on gravestone sculptures, creating a necromantic medicine bag, keeping a personal book of the dead, and other exercises will help you explore the vital, transformative forces of death.”<\/p>\n

Now, though, I am more likely to say, “You go right ahead — I’ll pass.”<\/p>\n

This is not to say that the Dead cannot be influential sometimes. But I don’t get all gushy about walking in cemeteries anymore. Too many people close to me have died in the last five years, and I have developed a nice sideline in estate and family trust management, not that I ever wanted to do it. You want a “personal book of the dead”? How about the file boxes full of documents in the garage, the resting places of the ka<\/em>-soul<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did not have time to cruise the whole INATS-West show three weeks ago, but I did walk through the big Llewellyn booth, since it was close by my friends’ booth. I scooped up some of the free stuff, including a flier for “a Gothic Book of the Dead.“ It’s one of life’s little ironies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[57,35],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-day-of-the-dead"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-gR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12059,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12059","url_meta":{"origin":1045,"position":0},"title":"Christmas, When the Veil is Thin","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In December (yeah, this is late) I was tapped by a public library in Oregon to give an hour's Zoom lecture on the \"Pagan origins of Christmas.\" I did it, but that format is still pretty weird. How many people are watching? Three? Thirty? Three hundred? And are they awake?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Christmas-eve-lantern-1-238x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13491,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13491","url_meta":{"origin":1045,"position":1},"title":"Go Light the Lantern at Your Door","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 30, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Go light the lantern at your door and honor those who've gone before. The worlds that part us now are twain for Hallow's Eve is here again. The westering sun grows pale and wan. The day grows dark The veterinary language is actually also faster sick and is not the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3794,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3794","url_meta":{"origin":1045,"position":2},"title":"Do the Living Outnumber the Dead?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Did you ever get into a discussion of the possibility of reincarnation only to have someone announce, \"Reincarnation is impossible because there are more people alive now than have ever lived\"? And then they sit back smugly. Or perhaps they quote George Carlin, the favorite sage of the Barstool Philosopher.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3401,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3401","url_meta":{"origin":1045,"position":3},"title":"No, Not in Your Apartment","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Russian guy seems a little confused over this whole Day of the Dead concept. You don't dress up real skeletons.","rel":"","context":"In \"Russia\"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=russia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":94,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=94","url_meta":{"origin":1045,"position":4},"title":"The invention of 'Goth' style?\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The invention of 'Goth' style? From David Clay Large's Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich, a cultural and political history of the city from the late 1800s through the rise of the Nazi party, comes this description of an avant-garde cabaret, The Eleven Executioners: \"After the opening\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":945,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=945","url_meta":{"origin":1045,"position":5},"title":"State-sponsored Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Students are hard at work putting up Pagan altars in the student center. At least that is what it looks like to me, although I am sure that la profesora would differ.I did not hear about a parade this year, however.Photos to come.","rel":"","context":"In \"Day of the Dead\"","block_context":{"text":"Day of the Dead","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=day-of-the-dead"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}