So It Begins and So It Goes

The so it begins part:

My original intent was to have a separate blog for the more prose-y nonfictional things that germinate in my head, but a stubbornly uneditable picture of an amazingly happy orange picker has let me to scrap the dual blog idea and simply use my only trick of posting here. 

The so it goes part:

Hopefully obviously and sadly, "so it goes" is a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, most memorably from Slaughterhouse-five, and it is used after people die or otherwise exit conscious humanity. I've adopted the phrase into my own views on the subject. This bears significance right now because a good friend of mine, though I think the degree of friendship is a bit unbalanced (dear readers this is not a one-likes-one-loves instance, I purely mean that I think I want to be stronger friends with her than she with me.) , told me today that among a list of things going on in her life, a friend from back home passed away/passed on/et cetera. She was our age I believe, and my friend was not in what I would call mourning, but just that stage where you find it hard to grasp, and I agree. 

I mean, it seems like a bit of of a crap time to die. I can understand dying when you're old or even just starting the tail-end of life. You've had time to do things, you've experienced a hell of a lot hopefully, and you can't really expect to beat all the odds. And I can understand people dying very young. You haven't had all of those experiences, and though it's still pretty cheap at least....I don't know.... you didn't know about them? I think dying young feels to us outsiders like a smaller rug is being ripped out from under the aforementioned deceased than dying when this girl did. Right in the middle of things. Right in the freaking middle. 

But I have trouble being very angry about it whenever I think beyond my initial emotions. I don't think there's a monstrously horrible room that you are transported to after you die so that you can have ample amounts of time to lament the circumstances of your death. I think caring about this life stops when this life stops, which is wonderful. I'm going to have to work how to remember people into that idea though. Into my little construct that keeps me sane/persevering amidst probably a plethora of falsities (see there "probably" was the lifeline. And I get to quote myself. Hoho). 

What I'm thinking this time is just how dividing it is. The same event is both stopping short so much and opening the biggest door I've ever heard of. No one knows for sure what's beyond this life. I for one think it will be good. I think that no matter what we've done here, that no punishment is eternal. Nothing in this life makes me think things are that far-reaching, both good deeds and bad eventually run their course. Maybe that's the budding economist in me, but if what you do right and wrong here eventually acts out and the Supreme Being has a choice, I believe God is good and that given infinity, He could warm up to us. Hell seems more rash than just. 

This whole spiel got very far away from a girl who died around age 18-19-20. A friend of a friend. God bless her. 

I have a macroeconomics test tomorrow, which is now today, and to the best of my knowledge I'm not going to find out what's behind that door between now and 9:05 am. I also thought of a few more things I'd like to write (fiction, don't worry, not another drab, almost stream-of-consciousness ramble such as this) as well. I think I shall mosey on back to my room and see if I can dream some of them out a ways.

Hoping all is well with you and yours

-b