muninnhuginn | Tree Planting

(It's better, and cheaper, than paying the 'phone bill--though we did that, too.)

It's a neat idea: Joe Strummer Memorial Forest

Reminds us we ought to do our will, not so much to sort out the possessions, more to dispose of the corpse with attendant lack of traditional ceremonies or memorials.

A second reminder in less than a week. The first being Sade's sadly-ignored requirements for the disposal of his body:

"...I would have it laid to rest, without ceremony of any kind, in the first copse standing on the right as the said wood [on his estate at Malmaison near Epernon] is entered from the side of the old chateau by way of the broad lane dividing it. The ditch opened in this copse shall be dug by the farmer tenant of Malmaison under M. le Normand's supervision, who shall not leave my body until after he has placed it in the said ditch; upon this occasion he may, if he so wishes, be accompanied by those among my kinsmen or friends who without display or pomp of any sort whatsoever shall have been kind enough to give me this last proof of their attachment. The ditch once covered over, above it acorns shall be strewn, in order that the spot become green again, and the copse grown back thick over it, the traces of my grave may disappear from the face of the earth as I trust the memory of me shall fade out of the minds of all men save nevertheless for those few who in their goodness have loved me until the last and of whom I carry away a sweet remembrance with me to the grave."

[There are odd parallels between the proposed concealed burial and the description of the hidden quarters of the monastery at St Mary-in-the-Wood in Justine, with its grassed-over roof and masking rings of trees.]

Too much death for a Monday morning and the Pullman's just steamed up to the suburbs of the dead with the harpies to come.... [And that needs putting alongside bits of Le Guin's The Farthest Shore.]