Many people are afraid of death. I would guess that the main reason for religion is because of that fear. People want to think there is more to life than just the life we have here on earth. They invent religions to fool themselves into thinking there will be something more. Life after death. As an editorial researcher at National Geographic, I came across belief after belief of life, or whatever, after death. At one point, one of our contract photographers hired me as a freelancer to do advance research on the Ways of Death. We even got a grant from a west coast woo-woo group to help pay for my research. It was going to be a big coffee table book on how people around the world celebrated, observed, or believed in death, or life after death, or whatever you will.

I’m just sleeping. Photo by Jim Gurganious

Occasionally, when I’m passing through a cemetery, I lie down and check out the view. Not that I want to be buried in the cold cold ground. No worms crawling in and out for me, no sir. Cremation, and then my ashes can be buried up there on the Wooddell Farm in the corner of the old family cemetery. But I do recommend checking out the view in a cemetery sometime. The people there don’t mind. They are dead.

As a writer who is aging, I worry a lot about the many book projects I have started that are not yet finished. Those will be my legacy – if I finish them, and get them published. As I realized the other day, Dashiell Hammett is not writing or publishing anything new. One can read his entire body of work in a week. And then read them again, and again. That is a legacy. My work is cut out for me. I have to stop taking so many naps, no matter the location.

As for my beliefs? I believe in gravity. It really works. And fairies and unicorns, because fantasy!

Me and the unicorn. Photo by Kat Forder