Space Dust and Human Ashes (Part Two)

 http://www.fortbragg.com/explore/glass-beach/. 

The coast of northern California is my all-time happiest place. I used to live in Fort Bragg and take visitors to see Glass Beach, a glittering, multicolored remnant of the town dump--multicolored glass bits and ceramic beads stretching along the shore still being polished by the waves. 

I've also visited the ruins of the Roman port Caesarea Maritima in Israel.
It's about halfway between the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa--and is similarly strewn with the jewel-like turquoise and orange remnants of early glass and clay pots. My father Frank (no, the other one) took a piece of Roman glass I collected and had a necklace made for me. There's something lovely in the transformation of trash to treasure. Which is pretty much what dealing with human remains is all about.

There's the traditional bank-book-breaking process of burial: embalming (read the essay “Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain” on an empty stomach), final grooming, dressing in a Sunday-best outfit (sans shoes and socks, because no one looks at your feet unless you’re Howard Hughes), a tucking in to a cocoon of appropriately hued satin and its outer shell of polished wood and brass followed by encasement in concrete to prevent . . . well, leakage. Classic. 

But there are actually several other, and dare I say more interesting, ways to experience deadness.

Ashes? Cremation is a real space saver, and best of all you don't have to stay in one place.

A tree-growing organic burial pod? The egg shape would bring you almost full circle.

Compression into a diamond? Glitter and be gay for all eternity.

A popsicle? Of course, if you’re concerned we're not going to get ahead of the global warming problem, you might have reservations about cryogenics.

A Body World sculpture in a Gunther Von Hagens exhibit? Perhaps you could be displayed in the perfect golf stance finally, or en pointe, or some other muscular arrangement you could only dream of in your waning years. 

The latest reincarnation I’ve read about is ashes formed into colorful glass objects. You could be a decorative hanging globe (or two for males), the base of a bedside lamp, a fanciful garden critter, a musical globe that plays your favorite tune, or perhaps a paperweight housing a spying device on the desk of the business partner who hired the hit on you.

I have always had a thing for colored glass. One of my old--scratch that--early boyfriends, Rollin Karg, now has a successful glass-blowing business in Kechi, Kansas. Check it out to see the endless, imaginative possibilities for glass sculpture:  https://www.facebook.com/KargArtGlass/

Perhaps my final trip will be to Glass Beach; it would be a smashing place for people to visit the dearly departed.



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