Reincarnation - who were you and who do you want to come back as?

[ahinton]

"Rein": something of use when driving a horse, I believe.

"Carnation": a flower once grown in commercial quantities, along with mushrooms of arguably questionable magical quality, in Dorset by George Lloyd.

That's about as much use as I have for the subject. Sorry.

As you were.

[Frances_iom]

I wonder if some ursine pedigree was present in any prior incarnation of our poster as to quote A A Milne “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

[pastoralguy]

I want to come back as Andrew McGregor!

The greatest job in the world! Receiving little, or not so little, packages from record companies and then getting to talk about said contents on the radio!

When can I start?

[ahinton]

I want to come back as Andrew McGregor!

The greatest job in the world! Receiving little, or not so little, packages from record companies and then getting to talk about said contents on the radio!

When can I start?

I think that one problem with this - especially your question - is that Andrew McGregor almost certainly prefers to stay as Andrew McGregor and so you'd not be in any position to come back as him until after each of you has met his respective demise...

[richardfinegold]

... me?

Stardust, man.

Surely I was a Black Hole somewhere...

[Ferretfancy]

As it's fairly obvious that we just stop existing we can't really say that we go anywhere or come back, whether as prince, pauper or Andrew Mc Gregor!

A character in Noel Coward's This Happy Breed says:- "She didn't pass on, pass over or pass out, she died ! "

The current euphemism for death seems to be "pass" a stupid weasel word used to tiptoe round reality.

[Richard Tarleton]

... me?

Stardust, man.

Precisely. We all are. There are (as I understand it) roughly the same number of atoms in the universe as there were after the Big Bang. Some of these are, briefly, us. They were something else beforehand, and will be again. Helping to build a herbivore, perhaps, or a tree. Pabs can perhaps straighten me out on the science bit. I find this quite a reassuring thought.

[pastoralguy]

I think that one problem with this - especially your question - is that Andrew McGregor almost certainly prefers to stay as Andrew McGregor and so you'd not be in any position to come back as him until after each of you has met his respective demise...

I'm happy to wait!

[vinteuil]

Precisely. We all are. There are (as I understand it) roughly the same number of atoms in the universe as there were after the Big Bang. Some of these are, briefly, us. They were something else beforehand, and will be again. Helping to build a herbivore, perhaps, or a tree. Pabs can perhaps straighten me out on the science bit. I find this quite a reassuring thought.

... as understood by Wordsworth, too, in 1799 -

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

[Richard Tarleton]

... as understood by Wordsworth, too, in 1799 -

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Thank you so much for that

[Lat-Literal]

No one before me but in 2010 I said that the state and other people had better be kind to me because I was always going to leave this world just ahead of its end. I haven't been well recently but I have good news. Today was the day I decided to find out on my own what I was still capable of doing. It involved a twelve mile walk - the first in eight years - and three quarters of an hour at a beer festival. I am really staggered - I thought that was well behind me - but quite pleased. I saw some lovely cows too and a very nice squirrel. (I say nothing before me - something flew in and something flew out in spring 1970 but that is a different story - I don't think it is very appropriate to dwell on that point here)

[vinteuil]

... three quarters of an hour at a beer festival. I am really staggered...

... that's what beer festivals do to you. Or so I'm told

[ahinton]

I'm happy to wait!

OK. Just don't tell Andrew McGregor and I promise that I won't either!

[ahinton]

As it's fairly obvious that we just stop existing we can't really say that we go anywhere or come back, whether as prince, pauper or Andrew Mc Gregor!

A character in Noel Coward's This Happy Breed says:- "She didn't pass on, pass over or pass out, she died ! "

The current euphemism for death seems to be "pass" a stupid weasel word used to tiptoe round reality.

Indeed. The even sillier version of this is the business of "passing over to the other side", which is what I thought only people like the late Lord (Hartley) Shawcross did (in his case earning him the nickname "Sir Shortly Floorcross").

[Padraig]

Helping to build a herbivore, perhaps, or a tree.

In Memory of Charles Donnelly

Killed in Spain 27.2.37, aged 22

I

Minutes before a bullet hits you in the forehead
There is a lull in the machine-gun fire, time to pick
From the dust a bunch of olives, time to squeeze them,
To understand the groans and screams and big abstractions
By saying quietly: 'Even the olives are bleeding'.

II

Buried among the roots of that olive tree, you are
Wood and fruit and the skylight its branches make
Through which to read as they accumulate for ever
The poems you go on not writing in the tree's shadow
As it circles the fallen olives and the olive stones.

Michael Longley (Gorse Fires 1991) Collected Poems 2006


Prompted by your Lucy poem, vinteuil.