Well, do you?

i didn't, but now that some time has passed, i guess i was wrong.

Now that you're here, and it's after?

ya. looks like proof positive to me.

it feels like after to me got to do something about that

I do.

you may kiss the bride.

Maybe. I'm such a fucking agnostic. The ghosts must be keeping me in suspense.

I do. someone should go into more depth here.

i was wondering who the groom would be. congratulations spider and gee, the first sorabjiland marriage.

the depth part is really between you and Spider Gee. Congratulations.

Which one of us is the bride and which is the groom?

Who gets to hold the shotgun?

I'm the groom. I have to be. Gee is a G-I-R-L. I had a sudden memory. The summer I was 9, I played with a girl named Laurie. She and I would play in her pool and sometimes another girl from up the street would play with us. We would make up stories and act them out while swimming around. Laurie was always the guy in the story, by her choice. I thought that was nice of her to let me be the girl. It's like when you played Barbies...no one ever wanted to be Ken. Ken was boring. The other girl from up the street never liked me, for some reason. Any time my character would talk to her character, she wouldn't listen. But she would grin at me, in a weird way. In an evil way. She was scary. I don't think I ever knew her name. Skinny, mousy little girl. Ick.

I'm the groom. I have to be. Gee is a G-I-R-L. I had a sudden memory. The summer I was 9, I played with a girl named Laurie. She and I would play in her pool and sometimes another girl from up the street would play with us. We would make up stories and act them out while swimming around. Laurie was always the guy in the story, by her choice. I thought that was nice of her to let me be the girl. It's like when you played Barbies...no one ever wanted to be Ken. Ken was boring. The other girl from up the street never liked me, for some reason. Any time my character would talk to her character, she wouldn't listen. But she would grin at me, in a weird way. In an evil way. She was scary. I don't think I ever knew her name. Skinny, mousy little girl. Ick.

Oops.

i think i believe in some sort of afterlife, but i don't have a real clearcut idea of what it would be. i guess i just think some of the energy that is in our bodies when we die gets dissipated out into the universe somewhere. if it's mental enemy, then some entity might have a little bit of your personality within it. i was in a conversation with cleo and her friend anabel the other day. anabel is our five year old neighbor. anabel was talking about when she died, she said she was going to be put in a box and buried. i told her and cleo that i wanted to be burned and have my ashes thrown somewhere, so i didn't take up any space on our already crowded planet. cleo immediately alligned with me, and said she wanted to be burned also. anabel found the whole thing disturbing and insisted on being buried in the box. i told her that the cool thing about dying was that you got to choose what you wanted to have done with your body, and that she was perfectly okay in wanting to be buried. it was a very surreal conversation.

is that in depth enough? hey, SE? do you believe in the hereafter? by the way, did you find my scooter for me yet? (this is kelsey, i go by agatha now for some reason)

i read an interesting book a little while ago called The Undertaking - by thomas lynch. it's by a poet whose day job is as an undertaker, and it's filled with his observations on death and dying. in the beginning he talks about the way people tend to "rehearse" their deaths with him - either by being flippant or egotistical. when a priest tells him that he wants to be buried without pomp and circumstance as a way of exemplifying simplicity, prudence, piety and austerity, lynch answers "why wait?" and suggests the priest trade the caddy in for a chevette and quit spending his money on cashmere and steaks and give it to the poor. "he turned his wild eye on me in the way that the cleric must have looked on Sweeney years ago, before he cursed him, irreversibly, into a bird." a few pages later, he says: "once you are dead, put your feet up, call it a day, and let the husband or the missus or the kids or a sibling decide whether you are to be buried or burned or blown out of a canon or left to dry out in a ditch somewhere. It's not your day to watch it, because the dead don't care." this was page 8. nifty little book.

my answer to the original question is: no. just a gut feeling.

i belive in reintarnation.

If there's a Heaven, I really hope it isn't just this vast infinite space of white light, mist on the ground, and jewels on the walls, where old people play games like bridge and poker. That'd be ever so boring. No strip poker either. That'd just be disgusting.

Nope. I think when you're dead, you're dead, and that's it. Nothing lives on. No heaven. No hell. Just. Dead. I don't believe in souls either. Chemicals. All of us.

who knows and why do we waste out time trying to figure it out. There is only one way to find out.

True. And no one's reallt bothered ot come back and tell us, so who knows who's right? I think people invent the hereafter because they are afraid of the unknown (death), and want to feel comforted that there is something tangible and understandable once they rot.

Yes.

If you've had a spooky experience wouldnt that be a way of telling you that there is something else? (after you die) need food. coherent skills dying

I don't know. I'm one of these people who really likes to explain things, so I have problems with all of my "premonitional" experinces. Yes. I can tell when someone's about to die/is dead. Yes. I can see ghosts. (? Figment of imagination?) Can I explain it? No. Do I plan to figure out a way to explain this? Yes. Because I really don't believe in a hereafter. Perhaps one can have spooky experiences without there being a hereafter? Maybe you see a picture once of the former owner of your house, and one day you look out a window and think you see them...who knows. Confused.

I think some people (not pointing Any fingers) automatically refuse to believe in an afterlife or heaven or whatever because it's cool to be jaded and nerdy to have faith. and some people I'm sure just really don't believe. I'm just so excited that I finally get to be the girl. The last girl I married insisted I be the boy.

I think your soul or energy,whatever you want to call it still lives and you go on to the next step on the ladder.

"Yes. I can tell when someone's about to die/is dead." What is this like Isolde? I know a person who gets really bad stomach aches whenever someone close to her or close to someone she is close to dies.

well, gee, though you didn't point any fingers, i suspect you are talking about my post, duh? It's ok, i am not jaded, and it's not that i bluntly refuse to believe, it's just i don't have any answers, all the ideas available don't appeal to me. it's nerdy to have blind faith. faith in general is not a bad thing. I have faith that whatever happens, it will be ok, it won't be bad. thats it. i have to simplfy it that way. the whole concept of heaven/hell , to me, seems so blatently a tool for control. To yield against people, to instill fear, and offer an answer to one of the greatest unanswered questions of human existance. i absolutely have a hard time dealing with the rotting of flesh, the burning of flesh and so on....so I too create my personal "heaven".....that is a space capsule, my body intact and ready for alien rejuvination. I long to become a Borg, a friendly Borg anyway. I understand the human need to do this, i don't however accept any of the "answers" available. Perhaps i didn't receive enough churchin when i was a small. Church on sundays to repent the weeks sins was not on my single moms priority list......... in the meantime, lapd on foot, on bikes, in cars, in helicopters have swarmed the rosevelt hotel next door......i'll let you know when the gun shots fly

I'll tell you how I can believe in an afterlife. I don't want to live knowing that people who abuse children or who shoot each other over arguments about where to shovel snow and escape prison on a technicality are not going to have to answer for their actions. If I knew that was the case, that there were no afterlife and that all the cruel people were going to get away with what they do, I would swallow my tongue. I don't see heaven as a reward, either, and that you should do good things because they give you points towards your final prize. That's mercenary. This may put a smirk on all the cynics' faces, but the thought of heaven is a great comfort in the midst of suffering. It gives one hope that while it may seem as though things are never going to get better, one day you'll be somewhere where there won't be any suffering. Hope saves lives. This isn't *why* I believe in heaven, though. I don't think you can answer why you believe in anything. It's like answering why you love someone. You don't love people for reasons, you just do. It's just a movement inside yourself that you can't explain. And just because *you* can't explain it doesn't mean your love, or your faith, is blind.

"I have faith that whatever happens, it will be ok, it won't be bad" I'm not one to get into these pointless discussions, but this struck me. Based on available evidence, it would seem that believing in harps and brimstone would be more likely than that everything on its own will come out all good. Especially as you watch the intrepid LAPD in action.

what available evidence? (duck BANG! BANG!) that was my point, I have no evidence of anything. (BANG! BANG!)

What's going on at the hotel?

Life thus far being the available evidence. Maybe I've just lived in shittier neighborhoods. "Life *is* pain, Princess; anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something."

awwww, nothing now, i suspect there was a chase, they surrounded the place got their man and went home

"but the thought of heaven is a great comfort in the midst of suffering. " cop out. not believing in heaven is a cop out too. i'm distracted by life.

So where does your consciousness go when you die? It's that whole philosophy thing about Where am I? If my brain is being kept safe in a nutrient bath, and my body's down here trying to demanual a time bomb, 75 feet below the earth, where am I? My body get's vaporized and my brain is up above, so they hook it up to a computer so I can speak. Or the other one about the scientists who played with this guys' brain and ran electricity through his brain in impulses, to give him the sensation of being on a lake covered with ice in the middle of winter. Then accidently they dropped the brain, it split in two, so they hooked up wires between them, and gave the same impulses, at the same time. So they got this idea in their head to split it apart even more, and give radio signals between them, so it was in the same order. But then they thought 'hey, why do we need order? Just as long as we take turns.' So they did that, and it worked fine. The same feeling: being on the iced-over lake in the middle of winter. So who felt it? Is the guy still feeling it? And where is his consciousness located? I think that one is by David Hume. The first one definately is.

Dead: I dream about people when they die--something that represents them to me being broken, etc, or I get a sinkoing feeling and think of them. About to die: people aout to die reek of fear and death. It's pretty obvious. They all stand out once you see what it is that distinguishes them. Not that wierd.

My friend A's 5-year-old niece V is like that. She knew her grandmother was getting a cataract before the doctors did....she had a very upsetting dream that her grandmother's left eye was "covered with milk." Three weeks later, her grandmother went to the eye doctor and was told that a cataract was beginning to form in her left eye. She herself couldn't detect a change in her vision. V is a funny kid. Her family uses her to determine if people visiting the house are good or bad. Several times, V has expressed great dislike for someone who seemed very nice at first and then went on to hurt someone in the family. She can also see auras. She told me I look light blue.

Ok. I never did aurars. But if you trust your gut instint about anyone, it's usually right. If something seems--not quite right--about them, then you're probably right. It has stood me in good stead over the years.

I wasn't talking about you waffle. I was just talking about my general impression of the way folks seem today. I will agree with you that blind faith can be a bad thing. I like a person who questions their faith every once in a while.

faith isn't as comforting as people like to think when your life is really on the line.

I saw this thing in Port Townsend to see your aura by computer for only $35. Fuck.

I just wasted a whole lot of time trying to explain how I had second sight,but after wasting my time telling my story I fucked it up and I,m too tanked to do anything about it now.I have that ability to know when somethings up,I just don,t know why.

nico says mine is green.......my eyes are green...she has said at times she has seen green glow around me........i didn't tell her i had been playing at the ole uranium dump....

I use to live in a towm in W.V. caller Nitro,most people who lived there worked at the DuPount chemical factory.You could smell it 30 miles coming or going,stunk like rotten eggs,I,m sure the fumes affected me.

Perhaps... Aura by computer? Whatever. I don't believe in auras. It's easy for someone to say they see something. I must believe that all things can be rationally explained. must. must.

I don't know many people who have died. but this is what I have noticed: 1. A person's body after they are dead does not really look like that person any more. Not like the person sleeping, it's like without their spirit/soul whatever to animate them, they become like a manniquin of themselves. Seeing a person's body after they die is important to me because then I can see that they are no longer in that space. 2. When my grandmother died she had a stroke. I went to the hospital before she died, and she was unconcious. Then I went to my aunt's house to wait and take calls from people wanting to know what was happenning. At the time that she died, I felt her go, and when my aunt called to tell me, I was not at all surprised. I don't know how else to describe the sensation, just a feeling of awareness that she had slipped away. I believe that there is more to us than just chemicals, but I don't have any specific religious beliefs such as heaven/hell, etc. I would like to believe in re-incarnation, because then I might meet those close to me in their next life.

I guess I feel like if I'm such a "clarivoyant" or whatever, then I should have been able to avoid things I didn't, like being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like knowing something isn't just coincidence. That's why I like to explain these things as chemicals. When we die, we are gone--nothing left, no soul, no--whatever. Just dead. Or, I should say, this is my belief. I don't like things to remain unexplained.

Lately I've been seeing so much about Tom Waits, and I've never heard of him before this. It started with this kid who taped some of his stuff and played it in the art room, I was curious as to what it was. Then I went to Port Townsend and saw a cd of his. Then I decided to bring in a tape of Big Rude Jake and my art teacher said he sounds like Tom Waits. Then I saw the column of What Are You Listening To?: Waits, of course. Those silly Synchronicities. It sounds like your explanations are a veil Isolde, and not really explanations.

Since you mentioned music, I will mention here that I finally got my Harvey Danger CD in the mail and it was well worth the five bucks and change I spent when I bought it off of eBay. It's a good thing. I like it. The first couple of songs are nice and catchy and I'm fond of the lead's voice.

Peut-etre. But I'll keep denying it hotly, and we both know it.

Ohh ho ho the last song is sooooo good. :) That's my favorite of them all, and the first one. My husband loves the whole cd. He stole it for a while when he was still in the University of Alberta. We found The Coolest apartment today in Olympia. $495. Not bad for 706 sq. ft. And it's directly center of our two destinations, college and work. Secluded, not right on the road, which I would have loathed. Right near downtown, which I think is the most beautiful part of Olympia. These were the only apartments that really spoke to me too. I'm happy. I'm excited. I might almost cream my panties.

congrats, jina. that's a good deal.