Can I Keep You?

As I am sitting here watching Casper - I am wondering why his ghost looks nothing like his physical being.  Bill Pullman's ghost looks exactly like him and so does the evil chicks.  Casper's three uncles don't look like their 'human' selves.  I know they probably wanted him to look like the cartoon version and you they didn't exactly have Devon Sawa back  in the day when Casper came out. 

I have some intense memories with the cartoon version.  I went in for surgery on my ears and they ended up postponing the surgery for 2 hours.  I was so nervous and so hungry - I sat in the kids waiting room and that was the thing they had playing - Casper.  Weird how things like that will stay with you.

I love Casper the movie.  It is just such a great story.  I read more in my death book last night - I must say, it is very interesting the stories people make up for creation and death.  It is amazing the different explanations cultures have come up with to deal with things like death.  In Casper, the father felt the presence of his son still around - so he spent all his time developing the Lazarus.  Would you do anything to get back someone you loved? 

"The flesh that lived and loved will be eaten by plague / so let the memories be good for those who stay" - I love those lines from Mumford and Sons.  I remember listening to their album for the first time the weekend I went up to spend with my grandma after she had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in three organs. The book brings up thoughts about the afterlife and if it is something we make up to comfort ourselves or are they just ways to explain away what we don't know  .Is it a way for us to 'keep' our loved ones after they have died?  Is life after death...just like life?  Or like Whitman thought...do we just continue on through this world as constantly evolving matter?

Emma

After watching the movie...several times...I decided to pull out my copy of Emma and actually read it. I'm about 100 pages or so into it and have another 100+ pages to go, but I am loving every second of it. Jane Austen's stories are so very interesting; however, I tend to fall asleep on them. If the book isn't smacking me in the face I'm typically slouched over onto the book! It has nothing to do with my lack of interest, but more my tired eyes cannot keep up with the verbose Victorian style.

I have also been keeping up in my Intellectual Devotional and I am now nearly caught up. I did not know that cows could even dream prior to reading this book, let alone did I realize that they couldn't dream while standing. I already knew that cows could sleep while standing, but apparently they cannot dream and sleep while standing - to enter REM sleep (the state in which you dream) they have to lie down.

I am also working on a book about death rituals, customs, and beliefs. I haven't gotten to far into this book, but from what I have read so far, I find it very intriguing. On the Pacific Islands, some tribes have life sized dolls they make and leave outside the tomb to represent the dead. I had no idea there were so many different perceptions on when the point of death actually occurs.