Original Prompt, Week 2

"They die around the clock here, without apparent preference for a day of the week, month of the year; there is no clear favorite in the way of season. Nor does the alignment of the stars, fullness of moon, or liturgical calendar have very much to do with it...it is also true that the dead don't care. In this way, the dead I bury and burn are like the dead before them, for whom time and space have become mortally unimportant...but no cause of death is any less permanent than the other. Any one will do. The dead don't care." -Thomas Lynch "The Undertaking"

There are two elements of this passage which I'd like to draw prompts from. The two could be taken separately or together. 1) Lynch spends great portions of "The Undertaking" describing what the dead don't do, don't think, don't care about, etc. This negative description serves to somewhat negate the dead person and bring Lynch's suggestion that funerals are not for the dead, but are for the living to the forefront. Take a memory, an object, a person, which you can recall to mind vividly and instead of trying to describe what or how that subject IS, describe what or how it ISN'T. Try to describe a scene, person, etc. through a negative description. 2) Lynch repeats the refrain "the dead don't care" several times throughout "The Undertaking." This is a technique poets use frequently to add emphasis, etc. Use this same method of repetition with one of the phrases, sentences, words, etc. in one of your drafts to create this same type of cyclical narrative and see what, perhaps disparate, details can be linked in this way.