Death Archives - The ClearOut

The Spectre of Mortality – Getting Older Ain’t No Fun! – Episode 239

In this episode, Dara is reflecting on ageing and mortality as he responds to his father’s current health battles. His father, who has dementia, is in a particularly vulnerable state at the moment and though he is confident the situation is only temporary, Dara knows it is an undeniable sign of the direction of travel that will only end in one place.

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Leaving the Room – Cheating Death, Solving Life, and a Planet Where Nobody Dies! – Episode 219

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In this episode, Dara is thinking about what comes next. Prompted by an article about Irish people signing up for their bodies to be preserved at death in the hope of waking up in the distant future, he finds himself perplexed by the desire to outlive a natural lifespan. While it is tempting to dismiss the participants as deluded fantasists, he recognises that something deeply anxious lurks beneath the aspirant futurism.

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Life Interrupted, the Comfort of the Familiar, and the Dangerous Habits of Avoidance – Episode 153

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In this episode, Dara is reflecting on the overnight passing of two of the animal members of the Hashtag Blessed family. It reminds him of a key moment from the iconic TV show The Sopranos which centred on the idea of a changing world that couldn’t be controlled. The idea of chaos and disorder prompting a desire for control feels like a very present concern.

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Notes From a Funeral, or The Power of the Collective Experience – Episode 86

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In this episode Dara shares his experience of a recent family funeral that seemed to succeed in channelling a profound communal expression of love and grief. Because of his role in the service, he had to wait to express his own feelings.

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Witchman

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a poem from quite a few years ago, inspired by the sight of an aged driver advancing carefully along a motorway, a long, irate tailback in his wake Witchman Witchman, wrapped around leather, staring through glass, blasted eyes, bloodshot translucent skin. Fingers like knots of gristle and rock, stuck in time, modernity raging at his

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Who’s afraid of the dark?

2 Comments / Advice for the Young and Impressionable / Dara Clear

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ― C.G. Jung Darkness and light. A dichotomy of great purity and simplicity through which humanity examines

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And the sentence is…

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During last year’s coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial a South African legal commentator said something that stuck in my brain. Trying to anticipate Judge Masipa’s ruling he was talking about what punishment the accused’s crime would warrant and by way of offering a context of scale of punishment in relation to particular crimes he

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Death

The Spectre of Mortality – Getting Older Ain’t No Fun! – Episode 239

Leaving the Room – Cheating Death, Solving Life, and a Planet Where Nobody Dies! – Episode 219

Life Interrupted, the Comfort of the Familiar, and the Dangerous Habits of Avoidance – Episode 153

Notes From a Funeral, or The Power of the Collective Experience – Episode 86

Witchman

Who’s afraid of the dark?

And the sentence is…

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