June 2014 was dark. And long. July, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite.

Transcription

1 June 2014 was dark. And long. July, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite.

2 My dad learned he had cancer in Months ago, it had entered the brain. The hotel was beautiful, and we had the best possible view of the beach. I called the couch.

3 Walking goes. Then speech, eating, comprehension... Consciousness... And, finally, breathing. Or the knowledge of breathing, if you like. To be honest, I spent most of my time in Ocean City reading.

4 6/19/14 It's time. He fights Satan. On a pale This horse one was cover decent. It's about a man who becomes the Grim Reaper. "Come try my strength, you dogs who thought to attack helpless prey! But when you do, O beasts of night, know that you face the Lord of Night. I am Death!" "Man is the one creature on Earth who knows he will die, and that is an appalling intellectual burden." "Who would really want to live forever on earth? Life would be like a game grown over familiar and stale,and what pleasures it offered would be overwhelmed by the intolerable burden of minutiae. Only a fool would carry on regardless."

5 It took me a couple hours to finish it. On top of the book hangover, I realized that I hadn't been to the beach yet.

6 It was the first time I really saw death. And the death rattle... Ceasing to exist didn't look quite so noble as Piers Anthony would have us think. I didn't know a person could make that noise. So, to the beach I went.

7 Water is everywhere. It's older than all living things and has composed all carbon-based life in some way or other. It covers the surfaces of planets without the luxury of landmasses, and flies through space. Every drop of the ocean was once a dinosaur, or a royal wine, or a terrifying thunderstorm. When you touch it, you touch all human history, and all prehistory, and millions of other people swimming in the world, and uncountable organisms perched in the depths. It's controlled by the pull of a moon barely visible in the sky, and it moves like a living thing, and it reaches out for you.

8 And, and there shouldn't be that much water in one place, and it shouldn't be so much larger than life and what is meaning compared to this? And then you see the sky and it's just another ocean only bigger and everywhere taller than you can see even though it's transparent how does anyone live knowing the behemoth they breathe inside??? And and and right now someone's just been born and someone's died and someone's screaming and someone's had an orgasm and this happens all the time always forever and no one even notices.

9 In that moment, that view, I believe I truly understood agoraphobia. Me, Standing in Front if all the waves, caught up in the incomprehensible universality of water and understanding the true size and weight of my existence Soon, my mother invited me back out. It was nice.

10 I did keep reading, though. Harry was breathing in short gasps. His voice came out choked. It's only a Transfiguration, You can't DO that! said Professor McGonagall, An Animagus transformation, to be exact. You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can't just visualise a whole cat's anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?

11 I'd heard of it some time ago, but I thought it was a joke story. As the week passed, my brother saw a stage magician. We all had fun. Just as Hermione started to drink, he said, "I'd like you to help me take over the universe." "I want to conduct experimental studies of spells, figure out the underlying laws, bring magic into the domain of science, merge the wizarding and Muggle worlds, raise the entire planet's standard of living, move humanity centuries ahead, discover the secret of immortality, colonize the Solar System, explore the galaxy..."

12 "Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you ve seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up." "I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised." "Every mystery ever solved had been a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it." "There is light in the world, and it is us!" "Life is not a finite list of things that you check off before you're allowed to die," Harry said firmly. "It's life, you just go on living it." "You had to put up with little nuisances, if you were one of the lucky and unlucky few to be born on Earth; on Ancient Earth, as it would be remembered someday."

13 I comprehend your nature, you symbolize Death, through some law of magic you are a shadow that Death casts into the world. And Harry's eyes stared directly... at that which had been named Dementor. And Death is not something I will ever embrace. It is only a childish thing, that the human species has not yet outgrown. And someday... We'll get over it... And people won't have to say goodbye any more... The figure of a human shone more brilliant now than the noonday Sun, so radiant that Harry could feel the warmth of it on his skin; and Harry sent out all his defiance at the shadow of Death, opening all the floodgates inside him to make that bright The tattered cloak lay empty within the cage.

14 "Extropianism, also referred to as the philosophy of Extropy, is an evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition. Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people live indefinitely....extropianism describes a pragmatic consilience of transhumanist thought guided by a proactionary approach to human evolution and progress." -The Modern Athena, Wikipedia Death doesn't need to be accepted when it can be overcome. There are living things that don't die of old age, and others that are nearly invincible, and we can draw inspiration from them like planes from birds. One day, if humanity lives long enough, it'll conquer death and space. The children's children's children will shine like sunbursts with the light of humanity. For every person on Earth, 17 are dead. Death is the greatest tragedy, and the greatest evil. I don't think I'll conquer it, but one day, someone will...

15 Funny enough, I never did go swimming. And maybe, in some small, knock-on way, I'll help it I did laugh at some seashells, though.

16 All images within are public domain or shared under Creative Commons license. Credit for the images not drawn or taken by myself goes to Shannon Johnson, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Pixabay, and János "Ajnagraphy" Csongor Kerekes. Harry Potter is copyright J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality was written by Eliezer Yudkowsky. The methods of rationality belong to everyone.