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Showing posts with the label mortality

Soul Music, Memory sequence, Death's memory, Lewis

"In a beautiful, incremental sequence of images across a number of passages Terry Pratchett contrasts DEATH, plagued by these memory intrusions, his desperate need to forget, with Susan’s gradual return of memory, from creeping to flooding “feeling…no, she realised…the memory was creeping over her from somewhere that this one was not only real but on her side.” “Images rose from the mud at the bottom of her mind.” “The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.” “The hippo of memory wallowed…” “Susan sat while memories woke and yawned and unfolded in her head. “I remember about that bathroom now,” she said. “It’s all coming back to me.” “Nah, it never went away. It just got papered over.” “She stood and stared at it as memory flooded back.” In the bereavement section I mention that severely intrusive memories can be a symptom of PTSD (recalling the bad thing that happened) and in chronic unresolved grief (reliving the good things and hankering). and unresolv...

Hogfather, The falling angel, rising ape.

  Definition of angel.  folk belief, mystic belief version.  Sometimes it 's used like that in the bible, but it' s more complex than that. Well actually simpler.  The Greek word angel means a messenger. It can be a heavenly messanger true but in the ancient world, in fact until recently, messengers were a regular and essential part of life.  In the gospels an 'angel' is sent, ie messenger to take a message in Luke 7v22, Luke 9v52, John 13v16. All translated messenger, but the same Greek word is transliterated elsewhere just as angel. Ho hum. Not good translation practice including the religious biases.  In this I really think they should have let people decide because in fact so called angels could be a paid messanger like they had paid scribes in public places to write or read for people, no phones of course. Letters were expensive and slow. In the armed forces they called it sending a runner. Any big employer would have people waiting around to run erran...