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The Still Position: A Verse Memoir of My Mother's Death

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Barbara Blatner

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“He was pale as only one state on Bhast dictated—not lacking color necessarily or vitality, certainly. Fey white was more comparable to a pearl; the color subtle and the luster soft, but still vibrant. In spite of the tragedy that could come with it, it was not a dying state. It was a state of living…sometimes much more brilliantly than people could cope with, including the Fey individuals themselves.”

LifeScienceDeathDyingLivingScience FictionThrillerStrangenessFeyGenetic StateStrange Angels
Book:Darkside
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“Toute fin de vie quelconque s'apparente plus ou moins au rangement; on n'a plus envie de se lancer dans un projet neuf, on se contente d'expédier les affaires courantes. Toute chose que l'on n'a jamais faite, fût-elle aussi anodine que préparer une mayonnaise ou disputer une partie d'échecs, devient peu à peu inaccessible, le désir de toute nouvelle expérience comme de toute nouvelle sensation disparaît absolument. (La possibilité d'une île, Daniel 1,23)”

DeathDying
Author:MICHEL HOUELLEBECK
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“Lew had never seen a dead man before. He just stood there, and looked and looked. Then he went a step closer, and looked some more. 'So that's what it's like!' he murmured inaudibly. Finally Lew reached out slowly and touched him on the face, and cringed as he met the clammy feel of it, pulled his hand back and whipped it down, as though to get something off it. The flesh was still warm and Lew knew suddenly he had no time alibi. He threw something over that face and that got rid of the awful feeling of being watched by something from the other world. After that Lew wasn't afraid to go near him; he just looked like a bundle of old clothes. The dead man was on his side, and Lew fiddled with the knife-hilt, trying to get it out. It was caught fast, so he let it alone after grabbing it with his fingers from a couple of different directions. Next he went through his pockets, thinking he'd be helping to identify him. The man was Luther Kemp, forty-two, and he lived on 79th Street. But none of that was really true any more, Lew thought, mystified; he'd left it all behind. His clothes and his home and his name and his body and the show he'd paid to see were here. But where the hell had he gone to, anyway? Again that weird feeling came over Lew momentarily, but he brushed it aside. It was just that one of the commonest things in life - death - was still strange to him. But after strangeness comes familiarity, after familiarity, contempt. ("Dusk To Dawn")”

DeathDying
Author:Cornell Woolrich
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“In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the ‘en-sois’ – the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects.”

PhilosophyLiberty
Book:The Second Sex
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