The real Halloween has come to an end weeks after trick-or-treat ended. Citizens of Earth have once again dodged another direct hit from the Taurid Meteor Stream. With a little luck, by the time you read this, we’ll also be free of the Leonids Meteor Stream. You read that right. For the past several thousand years, the month of November sees Earth fly through two shooting galleries. To understand the implications of this is to have a new appreciation for Earth’s history.

Here’s a fun site where JPL lists the next five close approaches.

“There’s many ways we can die” is true. It isn’t the dying from death raining down from the heavens that consumes me. Rather, it’s how these rock bullets alter how humans live and how they think.

The two ghostly spirits in this week’s photo represent, for me, two things. First, the Taurid Meteor Stream has left us for the next six months. Most poignantly, how I envision thoughts we once held so close and with such a firm grip that break free and leave us. Losing a part of what we thought was real is a death without the dying. Murakami-san is right. Be kind to those losing their reality. If you love them, reassure them your love isn’t contingent upon beliefs.

And know… know the photograph.