Slow The Endless Night

:::Holidailies Prompt:::

If the world was going to end tomorrow, what would you want to spend your last day doing?

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I love to watch shows like ” How The Universe Works” and ” Through The Wormhole”…oh and ” The Universe. “

What I find amusing is that they’re big on telling you how the world  could end.

In theory.

MAYBE.

In one of my favorite episodes of   Death by Universe they explained what taking a direct hit from a Gamma Ray would do to the Earth.

One scientist said the Earth would be destroyed in the blink of an eye- that’s why nobody is interested in really finding a way to protect the Earth from that because it would be over before we saw it coming.

And then this Scientist smiled-he smiled this super creepy smile.  He’d have given Vincent Price’s Dr. Phibes a run for this money.

It was a stellar moment on TV.

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So lets say some freaky thing happened and Earth got knocked out of the Solar sytem and we were headed  out into space where  the  Earth would turn into this giant ball of ice and we’d be locked inside of it.

I guess I’d spend that last day looking at the Sun, but I live outside of Seattle so you know- that’s iffy. More likely maybe  I’d wrap myself in my favorite quilt and light some candles and watch them burn.

In time they would wink out, one by one

And then I figure it would all be over.

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As I thought about this prompt I remembered some lines from my favorite poem ever, I named my blog after lines in The Immortal Part by A.E. Housman.

So here is what I thought when contemplating the death of our world:

‘Empty vessel, garment cast,
We that wore you long shall last.
—Another night, another day.’         35
So my bones within me say.
Therefore they shall do my will
To-day while I am master still,
And flesh and soul, now both are strong,
Shall hale the sullen slaves along,         40
Before this fire of sense decay,
This smoke of thought blow clean away,
And leave with ancient night alone
The stedfast and enduring bone.

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Ok. One day we’re all going to die- maybe we’ll all die together in the same moment or maybe we go on alone when our time is up.

But if I knew it was coming I’d live whatever time I had- reading a book, watching candles burn, playing fetch with my dog because I would want to live those last moments living MY life the way I always have.

Like  Housman says- I intend on being master of my flesh and bone until the very end- and I’m not going to be pushed or hurried along to my grave while doing stuff that I should have done while I could savor the experience.

Run around and cram a lost life into a fun packed last day?  Or go out on my own terms?

Not a hard decision to make when I put some serious thought into it.

Not hard at all.

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2 thoughts on “Slow The Endless Night

  1. I’m always wary about answering prompts like this one because I don’t think you can actually know what you’ll do if the world is ending tomorrow unless you KNOW the world is ending tomorrow. And we don’t. And frankly, I prefer that blissful ignorance at times.

    I enjoyed your post, and the poem (new to me) has me entranced.

    Here from Holidailies.

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