Today turned out to be pretty productive and rather interesting. This morning I jump right into my 3 Month Intensive schedule, starting off with the Introduction to Death course from Yale. This is actually perfect timing, as my interest has really been peaked about the anatomy and universality of death, not to mention that death seems to be the question human religion attempts to answer.

It was interesting to learn that one typically has two ways of proving the existence of anything: either directly through the five senses, or indirectly through inference. Even the inference, though, must be quantified through it’s resulting explanations by the five senses. So, in reality, all is tested through the five senses, period.

What happens at and after death is truly and universally unknown to the living. The existence of the soul, likewise, is unquantifiable. One question that came up for me was if the bible actually speaks directly of a soul, or if it has simply been amalgamated through dogma, like the concept of hell.

I also read from Michael Crichton’s book Travels, in which he talks about how crazy the people in Hollywood are. Then I jumped at the chance to dig into the book Almost Catholic. I also did some more informal research into monasticism, specifically about joining a monastery and the different kinds of orders out there. I think I am more drawn to be a writer than a monk, though I do feel a definite draw to the mystic (if not romanticized) notion of a life in isolation and solitude.

Maybe I’ll be able to explore that in depth in WHITE ASH MOUNTAIN.