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A Buddhist mentor once reminded me: when one breath goes out, that moment in life is ended until the next breath enters your body. …we die, we end, countless times a day.
And so the end not only just begins now, as todays prompt suggests, but the end is ever with us, repeatedly.Always and ever. In our life is our death, as immediate as fresh eggs or cream.

If i were writing a fiction this morning, inspired by what is happening in Israel right now, with bombs falling and children dying, I’d put myself at a peaceful rock concert, and hear not just the wailing of the instruments onstage, but the whining and screaming of bombs and people as their flesh is being torn apart by the Hammas’ savage attack on people whose only crime is that they exist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sadly, this is no fiction. It is as real as can be. as sad as can be.

At such noisily painful times as these (cue the Blue Angels cavorting over San Francisco Bay), we are reminded that no matter our philosophic beliefs, life can and often does end in any moment, often when we are least looking for it to end. Death as a surprise, one final shock. Those brave and muscular pilots do not expect death as they soar above us, but, surely, it crosses their minds.

And so, in my attempt at responding to this day’s Creative Caffeine prompt, i clumsily connect the horrors of Israel and Palestine with the past few days of daily torture inflicted by the beauty of supersonic flight over San Francisco skies.,,,,,for some reason or other, this makes a logical and kind of crazy sense to me.

There is no possible way that thoughts of war, death and destruction do NOT enter our minds as we watch the fabulous Blue Angels soar above us, leaving trails of dark and ominous smoke in their wakes. They rattle our windows and terrify our pets. They mean no harm, but they inflict it anyway. And the use of such aircraft in a genuine war is for one reason and one reason only: the destruction of life. SO how can we NOT associate it? How can those of us who have been in combat (I have not, soft doughy old lady that I am) not return to those horrible days when the bombs were aimed at us?? Directly aimed at us, meaning to end us.

WIth our human and often delicate natures, it is no large leap from loud sounds to thoughts of destruction.
We get a pimple and are able to imagine it is terminal cancer. We break an ankle and think our leg might have to be taken off. We are equipped to catastrophize. It is one of our gifts….and our definite curse.

So, yeah, the end does now begin, and we are then given instantaneous reprieve: another chance to be, to hear, to fear, to write. Will it be this way when we finally do leave this particular body? Will our time in the tunnels, the Bardos, the wind tunnels of Death spit us out on the other side into another body, human or insect? Bird or Israeli?

Will I ever know the answer to these questions?

If there is one thing i sense for sure, it is that i will never know the answer to such questions, just as i will never know, not really understand , the reason those Hammas terrorists feel the need to rip apart a childs body to get their land back.

The trade does not seem equal to me.