Keep burning

Some thoughts on the recent spate of cultural icon deaths…


It is destabilizing to lose an anchor of inspiration.

Like looking to your lodestar and finding it dark.

Maybe, you feel, a piece of you has also died.

But the fact is we exist in a continuum. We are not fixed points. We are a reaction. A combustion.

We are fire.

Fires burst into life, flare, crackle and shine, and eventually go out.

We are temporary marvels of the universe,

like rainbows

and sun dogs.

But unlike combustion, or rainbows, our consciousness is greater than the physical reaction that creates it.

We are webbed together by our love and passion and fear.

And through this, though the carriers may change, the fire spreads.

The carriers may die, but the fire rises.

It rises through the embers shot out

by those who came before.

Bowie, Lee, Prince, Fisher—whoever your torchbearers were—were and are part of this great conflagration.

And their torches are still burning.

Even as I grieve, I put my hand into that fire

(it does not burn me; I am fire too),

and I rise.

I rise.

We rise.

And shine.

Keep burning.


(adapted from this tweet string; dedicated to the spirit of Carrie Fisher. 🖕🏼 )