December 8th, 2004 - passage about dying from Loving and Leaving
Helen Nearing, page 175, one of Scott’s favorite fables:
I am standing on the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beaty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she is only a ribbon of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. There! She’s gone! But someone at my side says, “Gone where?’ From our sight, that’s all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left our side; and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminshed size is in us, not in her. Just at the moment when you say, ‘There! She’s gone!’ other voices are ready to take up the glad shout, ‘There she comes!’ And that is what we call dying.