16:28, Friday 11 Aug., 2000 Link

And I've been thinking about life, and death (and how not-life != death), and all the things that are said about them -- and I feel that previously I've been thinking in the wrong direction. There's nothing in the universe that labels this volume here, typing at you, 'alive'. It's just a human taxonomy. So it doesn't really make any sense to talk about life in anything other than human terms. We can't reduce it any further than that, because it just doesn't make sense. And since human terms keep changing, well, that means we just have to decide for ourselves what it all means and what it's all about.

Anyway. So the ashes are being scattered and I was just expecting a symbolic handful or two and they keep on coming, more and more from this urn, and you forget how big we are really and the wind picks a few up and I have to stop myself from coughing, so even now, hours later, my throat's still dry. And they say every breath you take has an atom of Julius Caesar in it, but you never think that cycle really exists, I mean really happens, and definitely not as quickly as this, but here we are and it's only taken a week to go round and my throat's dry and the universe is one person emptier and doesn't even care, but that's okay because it's my terms that matter, when it comes down to it: So it's not the universe that's one person emptier, it's me, and I can feel that gap right here.