My sister read this at my nan’s funeral. To help her not cry I practiced it with her as a rap song and did beat boxing for her every time she practiced. When she got up to do the speech I did a b.l.o.o.d gang hand sign at her and she laughed instead haha.
I love the indentations and line breaks of the original when first published:
Do not stand
By my grave, and weep.
I am not there,
I do not sleep—
I am the thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints in snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle, autumn rain.
As you awake with morning’s hush,
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight,
I am the day transcending night.
Do not stand
By my grave, and cry—
I am not there,
I did not die.— Clare Harner, The Gypsy, December 1934
So… Chickens = zombie dinosaurs? /s
Beautiful.
Identity is just something our brains invent to better make sense of the world. It doesn’t exist as anything other than a thought. You are the universe and the universe is me. The only thing that goes away when anything “dies”, is the illusory and self-imposed border between the “individual” and the rest of it all.
I am the soft stars that shine at night
Um, ackschually…