vault backup: 2025-10-21 07:31:25

formatting-titles.md

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+---
+id:
+aliases: []
+tags:
+  - destiny/uncertain
+  - status/incomplete
+  - authorship/original
+  - topic/other
+  - topic/meta
+  - type/encyclopedia
+title: Formatting Titles
+---
+# Formatting Titles
+
+* Books: "Chapter Title" _Book Title_
+* Articles: "Article Name" _Journal Name_
+* Movies: _Title_
+* Television: "Episode Title" _Series Title_
+* Music: "Song Title" _Album Title_

when-i-die.md

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+---
+id:
+aliases: []
+tags:
+  - authorship/original
+  - destiny/uncertain
+  - status/draft
+  - topic/other
+  - type/anecdote
+title: when i die
+changelog:
+  2025-10-21: v1 draft and initial commentary
+---
+# when i die
+
+## Version 1
+
+```verse
+when i die
+don't put me in a box
+to become an inch of human soup
+
+when i die
+don't burn my flesh to ash
+and waste what i have left to give
+
+when i die
+leave me to rest on the forest floor
+to feed the foxes and fungi
+
+and when you return
+to tell me how you've been
+and how you meant to come back sooner
+
+you'll find me there
+a special piece that remained
+waiting for your visit
+
+this is my sincere request and express consent:
+please make a xylophone from my ribcage
+when i die
+```
+
+### Commentary
+
+I wrote this at about 4:00 this morning (2025-10-21)
+when I couldn't sleep.
+at the time I thought it was very funny,
+it starts out morbid and death-negative,
+then becomes touching,
+then a sharp pivot to grotesque and absurd.
+
+I think now though
+there's something to the ribcage xylophone metaphor:
+
+The quality (musical or otherwise)
+of a xylophone made of one's bones
+is independent of the quality of their character
+or their worth as a person.
+
+To desire for one's bones to be _made_ useful in such a manner,
+in rejection of traditional memorial,
+is to believe that commodity value of one's parts
+exceeds the value of the damage treating them as such
+would do to one's memory.
+
+The speaker's request at first sounds like
+they're letting the reader off easy:
+"don't bother with burial or cremation,
+just toss me in the woods",
+but the convenience is negated by their second request,
+a task that would be so ethically and technically difficult
+as to be impossible for almost all people.
+
+To make the speaker's request
+is to make it the responsibility of one's descendants
+to make up for one's own failure to live a meaningful life,
+and to do so while acting as if giving them a gift.