"At our human limits, when we've gone as far as our bodies and imagination can take us, we meet the eternal ones. The powers that built our flesh out of the mineral accidents of creation and that are now building our individual fates out of time and the accidents of our hearts." - James O'Barr

The screen name "Mineral Accident", which I have adopted as my own, came from this passage found at the back of The Crow, written by A. A. Attanasio. This small section in particular stood out to me because of how it describes the human condition.

We are mistakes that came as a consequence of creation. Not unlike a chemical mistake in a laboratory where the forces of nature, in their endeavors to create, mixed the wrong minerals together and from this mistake came humanity. A race of mineral accidents that pushed their way into existence against the will of nature.

Humanity becoming a force unto itself, unable to be undone, was then incorporated. Mineral accidents were crafted flesh to wear, but this was not enough. Our accidental hearts, beating forcefully, demanded fates of our own, and so they were built. Some fair, some not; some beautiful and some ugly.

And at our individual end, the death of these accidental hearts we hold on to so bitterly, we meet our human limits. The limit of our physical bodies and the culmination of all our thoughts, beliefs, morals, dreams and creativity. The force of our accidental creation pushes us past our mortal limits and into eternity.

These are the elements that I incorporate into the term "mineral accident" when I use it as my own.

"Though we had inertia and radius and depth, we took the last train with velocity and passed our own deaths." - James O'Barr