Working on My Project

I'm putting all homework, etc on hold until I get my project done. I'm not nearly far enough.

I was reading through The Amber Spyglass again to mark the major points I want to talk about, and I got hooked re-reading about the land of the dead. I was thinking about Pullman's argument about death. He describes the land of the dead as a prison camp, where the souls of people are kept cooped up in a space crowded with spirits, and it's dark.

For Pullman, a more beautiful death is the release of the souls to nature and the material world. The souls fall apart and become a part of the larger world, losing their individualistic identity as they return to nature.

In rereading The Amber Spyglass, I was reminded of the Parsee/Zoroastrian death described in Cracking India. Parsees build towers where they place their dead to be fed upon by birds. It sounds kind of gross, but they think their bodies belong to nature after they pass.

I really like that idea. Oddly enough, it might have more appeal to me than even cremation and spreading ashes. Ash is good and all, but bird poop might be better to spread. No one is going to let me get away with that though. Bummer.