Per Mortem Ad Astra - Entry #9

Many ancient cultures believe that when the body dies the soul rises to the heavens and joins the stars.

Late on the night of November 2nd, Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, I wandered through the little cemetery of Terlingua, TX. Terlingua is a ghost town, barely an hour from the Mexico border formed in the late 1800s when elemental quicksilver was discovered under the red, dusty rocks of the desert valley. The miners and their families that occupied Terlingua were largely of Mexican descent, and it was their graves of stacked stone, white adobe, and rough hewn crosses that I walked by now. Día de los Muertos is sacred even now in the little desert ghost town, and the few residents each year gather, make offerings to loved ones, and light a single candle for every grave. The effect- a sea of lights under a sea of stars, as above so below, and in this meta-plane the fabric between Here and the Here-After seemed truly thin. Per Mortem Ad Astra - through death to the stars.