does consciousness weigh anything?

I smoked a cigarette today on my fire escape and right about puked.  I am wearing a Cowichan indian sweater that is too warm for the weather. It is too big for me, it belonged to my granddad. It has been zipped up in plastic as though he's never worn it before.  He used to always put on a thick jacket or big sweater and a hat before a smoke outside on the stoop.  I thought I would christen this sweater with a cigarette from the open pack I took from his room after he died.  I miss him, I wish I had asked him more questions.   My throat hurts.


creamy nail polish
creamy grey clouds and starlings
idle but deadly


"Idle but deadly" is on the pack of cigarettes.  I miss my grandma too, I think if I had explained to her buddhism she would have accepted that she was the closest thing to a buddhist nun without taking any vows.  She taught me to never kill insects, instead let them outside if they're intimidating so they can "do their work".  She taught me even the scariest looking spider is more scared of me.  She taught me that hate is never worth it, never.  I still save worms from the sidewalk when it rains, and I'm 26 years old.  Being this age and continuing this tradition causes people to think I'm strange.  I don't know what age has to do with it.


if knowledge is time
why fear the harmless creatures
while we grow older


My family never really talks about either of them.  I understand it's difficult but it makes me feel like they never existed.  I wonder if they still do.  I have heard scientific basis for the spirit or soul or mind continuing on as ordered energy.  The more I read of it the less it makes any sense which is a letdown.  The "white light" people interpret during a near death experience has been proved as your stressed brain, deprived of oxygen, pooling its firing ability into our most primitive areas.  The visual cortex and brainstem: When only these are stimulated all we perceive is light.  As a brain re-engages, the closest lobe to these areas is the temporal (memory).  We experience the most emotional, deeply rooted memories thus our life flashes.  Current neuroscience explains seemingly mystical experiences.  But if consciousness, as some believe, is a form of energy separate from the brain, and if energy cannot be created nor destroyed... can it remain ordered though our bodies die?  Do not mistake my curiosity for religion.  Philosophical, maybe.  First I would entertain physics combined with neuroanatomy but maybe I'd rather not prove/disprove possibilities in this case.  I could come up with a solid haiku for this train of thought.  For fear of not doing the subject justice I won't.