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i died tonight — 8 july 2003 some direction — 21 march 2001 root of all knowledge — 8 february 2001 an angel — 12 september 2000 in the country — 6 september 2000 untitled — april 2000 thoughts at lunch — february 2000 another failed love poem — late 1999 what do i think of reality? — february 1999 winter — november 1998 |
I DIED TONIGHT -- 8 JULY 2003 I died tonight. The act itself, the action of death, was quite sudden and unexpected. For some time, I had been asleep--or nearly--when what may have been a clap of thunder shook me conscious. The room was dark and the hushed staticky backdrop of heavy rain pervaded the emptiness that darkness created. I sat up. Motion was stifled and subdued in the dense air produced by another listless summer rain. Tonight, I still believed the rain was passive and uninterested. Though unexpected, it didn't come as a shock. It came slowly and perhaps even tenderly. You could compare its entrance and seduction to the rain covering the shadowy windowpane in front of me. Starting at the top, it came quickly, and covered slowly. Transparent, smooth, cold, comforting. Looking outside, through it, you would never question its presence or imagine trying to impose your will upon it. As much as you may think, rain rain go away, you'd not dare challenge a force of nature. At the moment it had completely engulfed me, when I was wet with death and in love with it, I was taken away. The whispering rain became a sharp, insistant raving that hung around me and above me and cut through me. The thick darkness of the room became luminous and clear; you've never seen midnight black! What was inside me one moment was outside me the next as a force that could only be described as gravity's vengeful twin sister threw me suddenly back. My outline, my physical self, was in front of me, and immediately behind then below. The shock was immense and the feelings indescribable. My self was stretched until the room split apart. The house crumbled. The city fell away. There were night and rain and stars all about me, and nothing else. Absolute silence and sheer still. There was no direction, but for simplicity's sake, you could say I looked up. There was one star that was growing steadily brighter. I waved an inert raindrop aside. The star flared and blazed. The night was day, white and white and full and blinding. It drew me in, without time and space to impede the path it had laid out before me. And there it was, what we dream of and write about and pray for as occupants of an incomplete reality: heaven. It stood above and behind me, expansive and humbling. Here in front of me was the sum and product of the truth in the beliefs of each of us. The powers, the origin and epilogue, the meaning and axiom. Despite many popular accounts, there was nothing to be seen or heard or felt. There was only presence--an absolute knowledge of ubiquity. This was more realization than revelation, but its immediacy overcame me. It was then that I felt what must be the most deep and terrifying invasion of self that is possible on this plane or the next. Already having no physical body to contain me, the powers next took from me that part of my spirit, that spiritual cohesion, that remained defining me as an individual. I could feel myself being spread out before them. And they searched me. They examined, they read what remained of my mind, saw what was left of my heart. They... frowned. There was a cool breeze that drew me up and returned my lost continuity. I looked behind me, but heaven was gone. In front of me the powers remained in scrutiny. It took two moments of eternity and it was clear that a decision had been made. The breeze returned, and built itself to a gust, a wind, a gale. There was a rush, a sweeping of the metaphysical hand, and the world crashed through me. I felt the world being forced backward. Each day of its history and each member of its existence were drawn through me (or myself through them) and into place, slammed mercilessly forward. I sat on my couch, stunned and unable to speak. Speechlessly exhaling terror and dysphoria. The rain had stopped. --jw-- |
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