There’s a certain folkloric idea that if you die at sea, your soul is sort of. Inextricably stuck in the sea. Because your body is irretrievable, your soul is also irretrievable, down out of the reach of the gods who look at the surface of the world. In Norse mythology, they said that the souls of sailors who died at sea are caught in the sea-goddess Rán’s net and dragged into her domain, a distinct and separate afterlife alongside Hel and Valhalla. Davy Jones Locker. The funayūrei. A lot of cultures agree that once sea has a hold on you, even when your body has rotted and dwindled and been made food for crabs, it still won’t let you go.
Do you think we’re going to wind up saying the same thing about astronauts.
i genuinely think about this whenever the "which is scarier the ocean or space" thing comes up. as someone who just loves ecology and grew up watching nature docs and learning about the nutrient cycle, and as an atheist who's come to accept the afterlife as being worm food, there's something so upsetting to me about my body being alone in space forever. i need to go back to the bacteria and the grubs and the dirt. they're family.
