Football Forum | Ticket Forum | Off-Topic Forum | All

Leonard Hatred 5:09 Tue Jul 24
Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

(nt)

OLD GEEZER 9:12 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

I’m going nowhere until we win the league.

easthammer 8:51 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Nurse Ratched wrote...

Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?
Easthammer

What sort of 'hope' are you looking for?


I am not looking for hope, I have it.

Whilst Larkin would appear to have been without it.

Bungo 3:36 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

I saw the very elderly Mel Brooks at Hammersmith recently. When asked by an audience member what his secret to long life was, he just said 'not dying'.

Made me smile anyway.

Nurse Ratched 3:36 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Easthammer

What sort of 'hope' are you looking for?

Chi-townHammer 3:23 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Russ> yeah, this might be a bit cheerier from Larkin.

The Old Fools

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there’s really been no change,
And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange:
Why aren’t they screaming?

At death, you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It’s only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petaled flower
Of being here. Next time you can’t pretend
There’ll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they’re for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines –
How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun’s
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction’s alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous, inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out

easthammer 3:05 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

As thought provoking Larkin's poem is it is not for me. It is souless and devoid of hope.

Surely us hammers have a large measure of both?

Nurse Ratched 12:29 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

...but it's a truly lovely poem.

Russ of the BML 10:55 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Chi-townHammer 6:53 Sat Jul 28

That's a nice breezy start to the week LOL

Lily Hammer 12:41 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

100 gravestones.

Hammer and Pickle 12:33 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Sir Alf

Death clearly frequents the kind of place you get a happy ending.

J.Riddle 12:31 Mon Jul 30
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

All the time The Ghost of Braderz still posts on here I refuse to believe there is no afterlife.

Sir Alf 10:31 Sun Jul 29
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

We should have asked Avram Grant when he was here what death is like?

chajonbubble 9:32 Sun Jul 29
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

I dont plan to be old.dying doesnt bother me. I dont want to lose my mind anymore than i have, and i dont want to be physically incapcitated. death...that will be fine.

Chi-townHammer 6:53 Sat Jul 28
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

This sums it up for me...

Aubade
BY PHILIP LARKIN
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Willtell 2:03 Sat Jul 28
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

I don't want to be a pedant Eerie but does that make sense?

Eerie Descent 10:17 Sat Jul 28
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Not being scared of dying is not the same as actively not wanting to die, Mashed.

mashed in maryland 9:53 Sat Jul 28
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Wonder how many of the people who've replied some variation of "no", still look both ways when crossing the road?

My guess is 100%.

Nurse Ratched 2:12 Sat Jul 28
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

Arf! @ philj904.

steveiron64 2:09 Sat Jul 28
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

No fear in death if you have peace with God. John 3:16 is true whatever the mockers will say.

Lertie Button 9:40 Thu Jul 26
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

The big sleep, no can't believe the whole angel thing

philj904 4:17 Thu Jul 26
Re: Are you scared of dying/death/the afterlife?

No but I'm terrified of getting alzhei

Page 1 - Next