have_you_ever_died endless desire tell me what it's like. . . 031129 ... night of the living birdmad although there wasn't a doctor on hand to make it official, four times between 1988 and 1993 It was sort of like being alive on really bad acid (and since the first time occurred before my first acid trip i can't cite flashback as my explanation for what i saw) Imagine distorted perception, If you weren't alone, you would be only peripherally aware of the people in the room with you, you are also vaguely aware of other dead_souls (if you could call them that, maybe it's a comfortable illusion caused by the dying brain) I didn't see the cliché "tunnel of light" that so many people claim to see and of the times it happened after my dad died, i didn't hear him or any of my relatives or dead friends beckoning me to stay or go. Also, being that from a religious standpoint, i would arguably be one of the "damned" for the life i've led, i also didn't see darkness and fire or here screams of torment from anywhere. WHo knows, maybe summers in Arizona have inured me to the heat, but since the "place" i thought i was in felt like the same temperature as the places where i "died" then who knows. Each time, it seemed like the place where i "died" just "not quite right" something was a little bit weird each time so it wasn't a comforting sensation or perception. Anyway, here are the circumstances around my four little "events" 1.) Severe allergic reaction to something in the batch of cocaine i was testing out, January 1989. There was a doctor there that night, but since he was a cokehead and had a lot to lose by having a bunch of college and high-school kids on dope on his property, obviously he was going to do his damndest to not have a corpse on his hands or the subsequent 'splainin' to do, by account of anyone close to sober, i was totally gone for close to fifteen minutes, no pulse, and no reaction to having my fingers pricked with a pin or to smelling salts. 2. Alcohol poisoning, fall 1990, was presumptively dead for a few minutes and slept (a likely coma) for three additional days, the comatose state was worse than being "dead" as i was aware of both the sensation of being hung over, thirsty and sick and could hear my best friend freaking out every hour on the hour that i didn't get up. This from the same drama-queen who was planning on paying someone to shoot him at graduation in front of the whole class and all of the alumni and faculty the year before. 3.Attempt at hanging myself in a place that used to be an orange grove. i got the job done, for the most part, and by my guess, i was gone for about ten minutes (which, i know challenges the conventional wisdom that the brain and its functions are irretrievable after five to seven minutes, but there are anomalies, and i am and always have been one anomalous, abnormal POS) Apparantly though, Murphy and his laws were determined to fuck with me again and it turned out my choice of the pine trees that made up the boundaries inside the grove was severly blighted and the branch split away all the way at the crotch of the tree, dropping me back to earth like a bad habit. When i came to for real, i hoped maybe i was really dead and somewhere else, but when the sudden splat of birdshit landed on my sleeve a second later, i realized i was lying on the ground and not still dangling fron the tree. It's a good thing the weather was cold as it allowed me to get away with wearing turtlenecks for as long as it took for the rope-burn to fade out, although, i suppose if i hadn't been wearing one when i did it, the rope might have done the job by cutting into my throat, go figure. 4. Bad reaction between a significant amount of valium and alcohol, thanksgiving weekend 1992. My "friend" Todd had been a med student before he traded it for cheap thrills and questionable, but profitable, business practices, Brenda had been gone for three and a half months and i was feeling reckless and depressed as Christmas crept closer. Todd, like the not-so-good doctor a couple of years earlier knew that dead bodies always cause people like cops to come around and ask troubling questions, so he and his sidekick "Ripper" decided that the best thing they could do was to take me out to a nice (formerly) fairly secluded patch of desert just a little off US 89 and bury me. Though i was aware of being in the trunk i was also awae of where i was and how we got there, which made getting back to the road when i came to an hour or so later. Twelve years ago this weekend, and i still can't quite get all the dirt out of that damn black coat. so there you have it, my interpretation of what it felt like to die. I also know i was awfully close to another visit the day before i took my trip to the intensive_scare_unit thanks to the phenomenon known as ketoacidoseis I remember being in and out of consciousness and other states of being all through that monday. I think the energy it took to get up and go to the doctor who ordered me to the hospital must be why i was pretty much out of it all through the following day 031129 ... phil it feels like you have everything 031129 ... blather spell check *ketoacidosis 031129 ... phil out in darkness a cold wind blowing across the body then through it awakening in the universe a vision of beauty 031129 ... phil there are no words associated with it 031129 ... endless desire wow. i read all those other things. . .ketoacidosis. . .that's some crazy stuff. i really didn't mean literally. but well. bird, you've certainly lived a weird life. 031130 ... Lemon_Soda Birdmad, if you've seen them, and you'd know who I mean, feel free to discuss such with me. As for dying...lets say yes, but I'm not comfortable typing it in detail. 031130 ... birdmad no specific "them" that i can remember, just a lot of aimless shadows that i figured owed more to my perception of the dead than their actual presence. the "afterlife" is either just our brain drifting away into its final dream, or a lot of us aren't really going anywhere 031130 ... phil well, I don't think it ends. 031201 ... marked . 031201 ... celestias shadow I think I died in a dream once. I'm not quite sure because I woke up just then. From what I've heard, your brain won't let you die in a dream because it can't project the experience. 031213 ... mon i've died in dreams some of my most vivid dreams 031213 ... Rejection from Death it wasn't your time yet birdmad. 031214 ... unhinged when everything i saw was glossed over with unreality a wicked nightmare or cruel movie this is not my life because i wasn't alive a walking nightmare no more energy to deceive i was so dead that no one bothered to ask anymore if i was okay my eyes were dead glossed over with unreality this is not my life and there was no way out a walking nightmare i was dead for years a ball of lead in my heart a pellet they shot straight through that no one has been able to excise a walking nightmare still reflected it wasn't a single event but a cruel movie my days are glossed over with unreality 031214 ... oE yeah - glittering dead breathes..i so get it.. 031214 ... oE there's a real stark passage in homer or some work from greek antquity..i think either f.scott fitzgerald or fagles did the translation..but it's about a visit to the land of the dead where the champion see's the tortured shadows of the fallen comrades in battle..it froze my being to look upon such words..maybe it was f.scott fitzgeralds translation.. and now..back to the redskins and dallas game.. 031214 ... celestias shadow hahah, the redskins and cowboys suck! *gloats and basks in the joy of being a patriots fan* 031214 ... oE patriots eh?..i haven't followed them to closely this year..i understand you guys are having a pretty decent year.. 031214 ... celestias shadow pssshhhh........understatement! we've won 10 straight, and we're 12-2 right now. *feels pretty damn cool* 031215 ... oE (....) 031215 ... oE okay so the resurgant pats aside..*mimes a smile at CS* the other night, Saturday I think, I didn't die but I had this feeling that a part of me was leaving my body...I had dozed off momentarily, then I awakened to Sarah McLachlins "Surface" CD wafting out of my earphones. My hands were around the CD player and I got the sensation that my hands,,my fingers were coming out of my hands...um like I was trying to step out of my body...I didn't panic and I registered the concommitant strong surge of an electrical short circuit in my body..the left side where I watched my hand coming out of my hand..my arm moving between time or time or my pereception thereof was crystallizing fractions of seconds into distinct plateletes of temporal artifacts..I consciously registered the whole electrical shock sensation as okay this is not a stroke..I am fully conscious and yet part of me is trying to leave my body..curious..um..I'm a pretty rational guy and as I've said several of my sisters have had some pretty scary psychic/supernatural experiences. I neither doubt or can confirm empirically, but I do not doubt the truth of the experience to them nor the mark it has left upon their souls. ... I think when I was 4 or 5 my grandma rubbed a poultice on my chest and helped to revive me from the undulations of deaths/or some really virulent flu/pneumonia final hypnotic embrace...I'd felt like I was falling back into an irrevocable sleep, but I wasn't scared and I remember my Grandmother calming my mother down and applying the salve, she saved me. My grandmother who was a degreed nurse used an old folk remedy to revive me where traditional medicine had failed. ... 031215 ... pipedream folk remedies and natural thingamagis have great healing potential. massive. i do things my granma tells me for the flu and all and i can tell you- works better than any flu meds *i* ever took. 031215 ... jane my heart died. that counts, right? 040203 ... x have you ever turned to dust? 040203 ... nemo billy_mckinney 040204 ... stork daddy would you know if you did? 040204 ... iNsEcUrE_GoTh_GiRl going back to the idea of dying in dreams my most vivid dreams are where i die i've drowned it was awful i felt every single alveole (sp?) closing and dying, and the burning was horrible. just thinking about it makes me feel ill as soon as i woke up i wrote it all down its about 2 sides of A4 long, and it is extremely realistic. im pretty sure i almost died once there was something to do with a ouija board, but i have amnesia of it, i only get small flashbacks. im pretty sure ive had a previous life too. 040204 ... iNsEcUrE_GoTh_GiRl alveolus* knew it was something like that. 040204 ... phil the secret ticket that says your dead 040204 ... smurfus rex does it count if they were "little deaths"? 040204 ... Syrope enough little deaths in a row will feel like real death. pure delicious death. i might die tomorrow. no sleep and a full day and an intimidating tomorrow night. i think i need a white collared shirt 040205 ... Frank We're all already dead, so nobody is really dead. If this is death, then what is life? Kill yourself and find out, if lif(d)e(ath) is that bad for you; that is all I can say to people with names like "insecure goth girl". Such moronic, moronic people in this shithole of a world. But we all love it at the same time. 040223 ... reue have only ever in my dreams 040223 ... iNsEcUrE_GoTh_GiRl hmmm i guess i'll have fun being a moronic person. it's better than being rude and obnoxious like some people. 040224 ... Dawn of Death and Gore Hey Frank, why don't you shut the fuck up you're an ASSHOLE! 040224 ... Frank HA jesus i havnt been to this site in forever and i realize what a little fuck i was what in the hell was i thinking and where in the fuck did that last shit come from ohh yeah... 050402 ... dafremen I died...then woke up one day in this new life. I had only one recollection of anything before my first appearance here in 1968...a small window overlooking the sea. Not so much a window as a hole in a stone(?) wall. I was completely unaware of this...return to life...until the passing of the events of the Summer and Fall of 2003. When shown the evidence, I of course balked. What kind of hooey would that be to believe? Still the more I reviewed the facts, the more obvious it became that my denial was just that...denial. Anyhow...I couldn't tell you what the "death" experience is like, but I imagine its the perfect capper to the life experience. Oh...and play your cards right...you might come back. 050403 ... *Amy* I`ve died once from alcohol, but I did`t realize. My friends told me everything. They said something about an ambulance and doctors asking which drug have I took, but it was only alcohol... 050404 ... *Amy* I`ve died once from alcohol, but I did`t realize. My friends told me everything. They said something about an ambulance and doctors asking which drug have I took, but it was only alcohol... 050404 ... camille I died once, in a dream fell from a high place hit with such a force. I awoke after hitting, yet my body was sore all over.. 050409 ... Aimee I died once when I was three from hypothermia. I woke up with electrodes attached to my body... I think. I died a second time right after my son was born. I woke up the next morning to hear that I shouldn't have any more children if that's what I'm going to do everytime I squeezed one out. My doctor thought he was being funny. 051227 ... god am_i_dead_yet? 051228 ... oldephebe yeah yeah i wanted to say don't try toucing this dead life languishing lige..hold my hand against the wall and just drive the iron pike through it - and let me bury whatever we touched whatever we could have become to one another - let me bury it in some deep cold secret place. freeze the scream in ambered gold - ha ha can't just get away from it - she leaned incandescant into this minor light and poured into this dull ruinous landscape her hidden angels flare, out of somewhere between her first soul and some opened door to..i can't keep writing about this..about her about the transmutation of two spirits w/o the wantoness of wish and desire it just WAS that's all, it just BECAME or ..but the unbearable anchor, the heft, the whieght of my madness, this bedlam from cupids slitted red eye and he or she or me or we dove through a darkened corner of grace the sound the unutterable invocation and groan of creation and it cracked dsomething open some tiny slit to a heavenly realm and we abode there in spirit and body. and now i wish i could in a pained slow gesture in spite of the tearing of my soul, peel the skin back of this prayerful acolyte of anguish, oh descicate sacrifice washed in the radiance of her holy eyes, peel back the skin for i would be yours, yours to cry yours open the holy furnace of your rage and spew it's flames and anguish and abysmall unwhispered apngs and pain upon me - you understand this already though right? i would be yours to rage, yours to cry to open the golden dam of those eyes that wordless spoke unbearable canto upon ream upon scorching soliloquy into the pious desicate reservs of my ruined wandering soul okay? i hide ehind a penitent recitense, my mouth stapled shut against the furnace of my blazing heart, for the glory gushing out would be yours, created by you, birthed by you ensouled by you and ultimately laid to rest in the weeping ground, and no polished stones to mark my place, no songs hurled to the mute heavens, no forlorn glances or hopes cast at what could've been culled from a fallen soul come wondering in from the end of the world and blithely falling into the grandeur of your holy beatific contenance O bride of God and man no obliterating sighs to shatter the song in that beatiful golden throat, that nightingales song that abides in that gushing glorious throated soul, no rose petals white and stained with rose cast into the soft mist of rain on that day - be free of what was never born - be free of it - i wish that i could be free of what was never born to live in my heart andyet at it's moment of death and rage it WAS born, it burst through the great oak doors of my heart and burned and burnt them down and i only wih i knew or could find the grace and the silence to carry it - and carry it i will - i have cast canto upon canto upon the burning pyre of this shattered verse, i heard you, i heard your soul crying too late, far too late, your wordles eyes wash them of this - but you did - you did - for who can be joined to a thing to a man thinly breathing in an open tomb, how could i have said these things to you, you brought me to myself, to my God and i just don't know now..from the one to the other and then to me and then to my God. So i cast canto upon canto of shattered verse upon the pyre. so then she hath stitched her hem with black and golden thread, the midnight splendor and roused the dead only to turn upon that dancerly heel velvet dressed and shimmering soul and maybe perhaps one black frozen anguished tear trembling upon the cusp, upon the brims of her beautiful eyes only to dissolve and never to rest upon the obsidian glory of her cheek. but you see. that is the wonder of things, the wonder of wound turned to power taken in and shattered and turned to power. and before all this i kneel emptily, head bowed and contemplated that bejeweled silver blade of possibility watched it shatter into ten thousand fractures of this celestial apocalyptic rain shimmer and frost and melt all around me and then from the corner of my eye i sensed it, my doom like a great black gleaming steam locomotive hurtling towards me and i sat on the track kneeling emptily for what other cause can there be for me, oh inpenitent dreamer whose life is literally made of song, of verse of the madness of passion and this undying and obliterating poetic dream, what other cause can there be for me to haunt whitmans untutored and yet true dream. i am alive only in the sound of someones song, oh breath those glittering death breaths into me, say to me what sylvia said, i wanted to shake my head violently against the impulse once long ago but now i kneel emptily upon the tracks come hurtle and spill me forever into the cosmos. Crush me to pieces and run me over, come quickly and with abandon and let me ride deaths wanton scream with the wantoness of a lover swept up into the wordless rage of passion and ecstacy unfathomed, let me ride it unto its a thosand hands reached for one straw and pressed thier hope and whieght and the burden of unfullfilled lives of hoped for romantic absolutism, of the trajedy and the dominion of authentic romantic trajedy and the dream of that quest coming finally to an end and somehow summed up in this...but he only saw one, he only wanted to honor one, one that he could hope never to even touch, let Heaven whisper violently, let the lesson be learned once again, oh the idleness of being alive, the idle torment of it and the sagacity of the fall and to feel oneselve shattering against the ground and here i am again in this place without pardon. so i recieve your ruthless contempt. Have i cut adequately to the heart of my grievances? have i impose my sophomoric quixotic dream of absolutist romantic trajedy upon the hardened temples of your ears, your eyes your souls long enough? is it itme for me to just order a large latte brushed with nutmeg and cinnimon and kissed lightly with bean and vanilla and then just leave or sit quietly, just log on and meander aimlessly the endlessly throughfares of the net, trying to gouge or cull out of that cold technical world some measure of poetry and beauty and song and dream? for this is what i am made still after all these years this is all that i can know. please don't ask anything else of me. this is all i can be. i am truly alive in the dream, in the arms of my savior or in the clasp of someones dreampangs or the sound and fury and riot of someones beatific goddess soul. and you ALL really are goddesses. so .... so a simple dream i leave here, i've tend it since i was a small child..just to drink clear water and plant a field, in bare feet, thrust my hand into the rich soil, and maybe to coax the seed unzipped to peek gingerly through the soil. yeah ... have i died? yeah literally and figuratively and spiritually far too many times. this shit is getting old. ... open your high hearts, listen to your lower one, please listen to yourselves and try to see the wonder in your wounds. a truly great teacher and counselor shared that with me. seeing the woner in our wounds. yeah if you can get past the screaming spear, if you can get past the whole bedlam breaking your bones from the inside out. our lives are not our own any more. so i'd just say live for yourself, and your own true beauty first befroe you pursue what the culture or even the vase you pour every hope and aspiration into because it cannot be returned, believe me, if you are just so fucking quixotic like me who the hell can return that shit w/o being destroyed by it themselves? ... 051228 ... hsg yes. what i saw was enough to understand that i should live this life the best i can, be nice, and take every opportunity to live_love_laugh. live_love_and_laugh. 070727 what's it to you? who go blather from