Scribbles and Bits

Soul Composting
Summary: “In many cultures, both ancient and modern, three types of dead are almost always presumed to be dangerously restless: those who have no received funeral rites (ataphoi), the untimely or prematurely dead (aōroi), and those who have died violently (biaiothanatoi). The reason that ataphoi are restless seems fairly obvious: no longer among the living, they are not yet in their proper place within the realm of the dead either; they linger at the border in between or move back and forth without peace. The remedy for problems caused by this sort of dead seems obvious as well: performance of proper funeral rites usually does the trick. Both the problems and the remedies connected with the violently dead and the untimely dead are more complex, however..." --Johnston's Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece, pg. 127
Series: Essay
Word Count: 3000 words
Notes: This personal essay won the LiberaPay/Patreon poll this month! It’s about our personal inner workings, death-cycle, and religious practice, and it is written in spiritual terms more than psychological. (If you prefer a psychological discussion of similar territory, see our Memory Work Essays.) It is not intended to be a guide or of general use, though if you do find it helpful, that’s great. Please do not make this into a Star-Bellied Sneetches thing, for the love of all that is dead and holy. Be aware, this essay is about death and heartbreak, and includes some of the writing/art our ghosts have made, which you may find intense! This essay also owes a debt to Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything, by Viktor Frankl.


In LB land, being dead and being a ghost aren’t the same. All ghosts are dead, but not all dead people become ghosts.

( Death! )

 Sneak: last night I laid out two humane mousetraps, and this morning one had caught a mouse!

It was already dead. :( There were no signs of mess or panic chewing, and it was still on its feet with its eyes open, so best I can figure the poor thing scared itself to death. (Biff says maybe it just had a freak mouse heart attack or something.) I took it to a quiet little corner of park so that it could rest easy and be returned to the ecosystem without fuss. I will keep an eye on its decay process and if no scavengers get it, perhaps I can procure a mouse skull.

Regardless, at least the traps are working!

RIP mouse.

Now for the fun SPX post: BOOOOOOOOKS!

( Books books books boooooooks )

Mori: randomly found a large (4.5, 5 inch) raccoon skull today, clearly accidentally dropped by a human. It had already been cleaned, though incompetently and over-hastily. (There are chisel marks and damage in multiple places; I originally thought the poor ringtail died in a car accident and been skidded across asphalt hard enough to scrape bone away, but the chisel marks are in all sorts of places and directions, including the roof of the mouth, so I think what happened is someone got overzealous in defleshing.) Despite that damage and a lack of almost all teeth, it's a handsome skull!

I'm going to maybe try bleaching it with H2O2 with my rabbit skull, to get it nice and white. May upload ref photos of both at multiple angles when Internet properly set up, since it's hard to get photos of skulls at more than one angle.

 Sneak: I have scavenged a rat and a rabbit skull! The bones are mostly clean, and one of my goals will be to complete the process and bleach them for inside! @_@ It will be a good experiment, and one I can do even though we're still recovering; it takes time, rather than effort!

I am very pleased. It is hard to find intact skulls!