``It is a good day to die." --Crow warrior

Death
is the scrap dealer, stripping the world for spare parts, separating, destroying connections... The imagination at night takes events out of life, and the bricoleur in the service of the death instinct scavenges and forages for the day's residues, removing more and more empirical trash of the personal world out of life and into psyche.
--James Hillman, Dreams and the Underworld

Amongst the Kulin people it was said that at first the Moon revived those who died with drinks of magic water, thus prolonging their lives indefinitely. For some reason the Pigeon disapproved of the practice. Exercising his own considerable talents, he counteracted the effect of the magic water, so that those who died remained dead--as men have done ever since.
--A.W. Reed, Aboriginal Myths, Tales of Dreamtime

He who knows how to live can walk abroad.
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.
--Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, Gia-Fu and Jane English, trans.

I just want to do God's will. And he has allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memphis speech (the day before his assassination)

Death Dreams

Will I live tomorrow,
Well. I just can't say.

But I know one thing for sure:
I don't live today."
--Jimi Hendrix, I Don't Live Today

``The fact is, those who tackle philosophy aright are simply and solely practicing dying, practicing death, all the time, but nobody sees it."
--Socrates, from Plato's Phaedo

Hear "The Power Lines" in Real Audio.

``You've done well," she said, ``but listen to me.
All this is the decor of love, the branches
and leaves and blossoms. You must live
at the root to be a true lover."
``Where is that! Tell me!"
``You've done the outward acts,
but you haven't died. You must die."

When he heard that, he lay back on the ground
laughing, and died. He opened like a rose
that drops to the ground and died laughing."
--Jalal-Ud-Din Rumi, Mathnawi

Muse	Dreaming
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