Part One: Life

     As with all good things, my story is preceeded by another story. One far grander than any mortal mind could invent, and yet one which every mortal mind yearns to believe, though often circumvented by fear or doubt. Doubt should never arrest our belife, only sharpen it. And so, this investigation into eternity and what, after, is underneath this thing called life (for, after all, what better wonderful "possiblity space" for metaphor and implication could there be other than the world we live in?) must begin with brokeness, a grief both too large for words and too keen for silence. Rather than pretend I can write poetry myself, I shall let Emily Dickenson give the toast at this long, and impendingly philosophical affair.

I MEASURE every grief I meet

With analytic eyes;

I wonder if it weighs like mine,

Or has an easier size

I wonder if they bore it long,

Or did it just begin?

I could not tell the date of mine,

It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if hurts to live,

And if they have to try,

And whether, could they choose between,

They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled--

Some thousands--on the cause

Of early hurt, if such a lapse

Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still

Through centuries above,

Enlightened to a larger pain

By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;

The reason deeper lies,--

Death is but one and comes but once,

And only nails the eyes.

There's grief of want, and grief of cold,--

A sort they call "despair";

There's banishment from native eyes,

In sight of native air.

And though I man not guess the kind

Correctly, yet to me

A piercing comfort it affords

In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross,

Of those that stand alone,

Still fascinated to presume

That some are like my own.