Chris wrote me an email last September from her hospital bed where, unable to sleep, she had been watching a BBC documentary Seven Ages of Starlight on iPlayer.

red giants are alchemists!
gold ejected into the cosmos
so we are stardust after all

In the last few months of her life, Chris became fascinated with cosmology. In her later writing and artful practice, she explored the idea of a “cosmic self” coming from and returning to something greater: a unity, a oneness, a universal whole.

She meant this both literally (the incarnation and disincarnation of our physical substance) and metaphorically (the re-framing of our place and purpose in the cosmos). She tried to give form to her thoughts in words and diagrams. Here’s a page that she wrote/drew at that time, trying to piece it all together:

It’s fascinating, complex stuff and I have several of her notebooks yet to read to delve under the surface, though I suspect that some of her insights will be beyond my current understanding.

What I love most about the page is the note she has added at the top: “welcome home stardust.” It comforts me to know that Chris faced her own death with a sense of homecoming.