Now that I have survived yet another year I suppose I should be happy not to be stuck in a hospital bed somewhere or living in fear in Syria, but life is a funny thing when you have it, it seems like it is just like air: you take what you get and exhale the rest.
David Bowie died for our sins, our sins of omission, our sins of neglect, our sins of distraction. He was beloved by millions and will will long be remembered. Almost on the same day a 89 year old lady died in Massachusetts and her family mourns her now, plans her wake and burial and dozens of people mourn her passing. We may agree that when a soul moves on the Earth is diminished and when a new person is born the earth is reborn, thus the heartbeat of the universe is maintained. The pulse of the planet remains strong.
Now the oceans are rising and will do so increasingly as our "Leaders" debate if mankind is worth saving or if we should simply count it as a real estate offering which promises great things. But here's the Thing: when disaster occurs we lose the very young, as they cannot yet adapt. We lose the very old as they have no resources left to recover. The remaining have neither the innocence of youth nor the wisdom that comes with age. The world like a black hole eats the knowledge and spits out random radiation. As islands disappear beneath the waves, as Disney watches it's castles crumbling into sand, as beach side resorts become a scuba divers vacation spot, as the skyscrapers in New York find their foundations crumbling under salt water attack, will we have the intelligence to forget the damn elections for a few years and get started moving the populations away from Death and towards Tomorrow?
Probably not, such a reaction would be unique in our history.
The sun rises and the sun sets. Life flares and then fades. The music has to stop eventually, why not sooner than later? But chances are the last to leave will whistle a little tune as they stride toward the Light. A few eternities later the energies will have created new worlds, new Life, new debates about meaning. The new poets will little suspect they walk on the powdered bones of great thinkers and performers.
But there will never be another David (Jones)Bowie, never another Ziggy Stardust. Grandma will never hold her dear babies in her lap, never brush away their tears again.
But existence and Love cannot be destroyed as this is the basis for life, so things change but they change again later. So someday another child of earth will sing a song nobody has ever heard, in a tune nobody has ever imagined.
The universe tapping it's feet to the tune of the gravity waves washing up on the shore of a black hole, pauses and listens to the thin sounds of a great ape helping her child sleep beneath fading stars.
