Letter from The Afterlife
It was quite a shock.
Imagine it like this: Nature has promised you a gradual death through the speedy attrition that is cancer. (Any kind, although this turned out to be a particularly virulent prostate cancer.) Since I was not a man of blind faith, my final months were particularly fearful, though tediously so. It was like being strapped to a railroad, but not being able to see or hear the oncoming train.
When your time comes, even when it's calculated, it's never your choice. This was the very last realization I had as a living being. When I felt my insides sieze up and the earth shake, my brain kept telling me everything was going to be okay, everything was going to be alright. It pacified me forcefully as it proceeded to turn out the lights. It was then that I had my horrible last thought. Someone...something...was deciding it was time for me to leave, smashing me to pieces while my soul raged in anger. If this was God, then I could see why he had so many enemies.
After that there was nothing. Or, after the fact, I assume this was the case. At the time I had no doubt that I was in the afterlife, as I had instantly went from lying prone in a hospital bed to a feeling of complete comfort and security. I still could not see or hear anything, but I felt my entire surroundings rippling around me, as if this new reality had yet to assert itself. In wonder, I waited for whatever was to come next. My anger faded to curiosity, and I remember thinking that this must be how it feels to everyone who dies. To me, it was hilarious. The same free will that made me furious at my so-called creator was the same thing that was making me too inquisitive to focus on that same rage.
A rude tugging and jerking were the next sensations I felt. If I had a mouth I would have yelled out, "Hey!", but all I could do was endure it helplessly as I found myself pulled into a sudden light. My first thought, as my eyes began to focus and my ears began to register sound, was the same thought that everyone would have in this situation. Heaven. I had made it to heaven even with all the dumb shit I'd pulled in my lifetime.
Instead of pearly gates, thought, I found a masked pair of eyes above me. An instant later I felt a fat, rubbery finger shove itself into my mouth and start wriggling around. Whatever it was doing, I suddenly found that I could breathe...that I had to breathe. The urge was irresistible and I filled my lungs with air that had a very odd twist to it. I had no idea what that twist was, but I knew instinctively that any time air has an actual taste to it, something was up.
I had absolutely no time to think on that, however, because I was being lifted into the sky and pivoted around to gaze at...at what I thought would be the afterlife. Even now, the realization is hard for me to dwell on. I saw doctors, what were presumably my parents, an obvious hospital room. I was a baby, I had been born again - as trite as that sounds - moments after dying in a hospital bed that for all I knew was one wing over in the same building. What was worse, all of that was starting to fade from my mind. Everything I knew from my past life was falling away like leaves in autumn. I squirmed, I wriggled, I fought as hard as I could to keep my entire fucking life from disappearing but I was utterly powerless. I began to cry...it was the only sound of protest I knew how to make, as everything I knew melted away. A moment later, I had forgotten why I was crying.
Anyway, as it turned out, I had re-entered the living world a good forty years after kicking off the mortal coil. Where my soul was, where I was, in between any of that is a total fucking mystery. Maybe there really is an afterlife, but it's so incomprehensible that the human mind just isn't smart enough to recall it. Who knows. (Nobody! Which is probably the whole point.)
The "future" is a lot like you'd expect it to be if you're a cynic. People's general health and the environment are kind of on life support. A can of soda costs five bucks. The economy is kind of wobbly. The president is still white and affluent, though apparently we had our first black president before I was born for the second time. Oh, and this is a neat thing, though: the internet is totally wireless and it's increasingly more difficult to function in normal society without it. It's having a weird effect on libraries. They're actually beginning to close some up because there's a big governmental push to just have one archive of printed material and not one in every town. Otherwise there's nothing too new to report. Same shit, different day. It's not a good world to bring kids into, I know that much. Can you imagine being brought up into a world where there's not enough drinkable water? And that being the only world you know? Fucking spooky.
I can accurately report that street drugs are still around in great supply, because that's how I came to remember my entire previous life, revelations and all. I don't know if it broke down some hidden chemical wall in my brain or what, but it all came back to me after this one trip in Grants Park. I wasn't functioning too well in the working world after that, I kept getting preoccupied with two lifetimes worth of lessons and conclusions. This was all last summer and I've pretty much been a shambles since then. I'm not working. I'm not doing much else but thinking. I'm way too scared to touch drugs anymore, I'm too afraid it'll bring more back. (Like where I was in between death and life, for instance.)
Sometimes I just have to laugh because I know the answer to The Ultimate Question and all that knowledge has done is kept me completely immobile. I look at other people now and wonder what they would do if they knew. I try and discern the personalities of my friends and family to see if I can tell what kind of person they were in their previous life. I've looked up my old family, but there's only grandkids left, and at this point they're too old themselves to be able to remember me clearly.
Some days I just feel completely trapped and I contemplate killing myself just to see when and where I'll wake up next. Maybe there wouldn't be a "next" time. After all, killing yourself would be actually taking your death into your own hands and choosing when you stop. And I'm sure God would hate if I did that. He wouldn't let me go anywhere after pulling that kind of stunt.
And oddly enough, I want to keep going. It feels like I was chosen for it, almost. Like I'm supposed to keep going and seeing humanity repeat itself over the centuries. And perhaps in time I'll be the only one who knows how to stop it. It could be Divine Purpose.
Or it could be the drugs. Jesus, I don't fucking know. I was hoping writing this all down would help clear it up a little, but all it's done is make my ass hurt. Wisdom of the Ages, that's me. Can't even hold down a job these days...
Imagine it like this: Nature has promised you a gradual death through the speedy attrition that is cancer. (Any kind, although this turned out to be a particularly virulent prostate cancer.) Since I was not a man of blind faith, my final months were particularly fearful, though tediously so. It was like being strapped to a railroad, but not being able to see or hear the oncoming train.
When your time comes, even when it's calculated, it's never your choice. This was the very last realization I had as a living being. When I felt my insides sieze up and the earth shake, my brain kept telling me everything was going to be okay, everything was going to be alright. It pacified me forcefully as it proceeded to turn out the lights. It was then that I had my horrible last thought. Someone...something...was deciding it was time for me to leave, smashing me to pieces while my soul raged in anger. If this was God, then I could see why he had so many enemies.
After that there was nothing. Or, after the fact, I assume this was the case. At the time I had no doubt that I was in the afterlife, as I had instantly went from lying prone in a hospital bed to a feeling of complete comfort and security. I still could not see or hear anything, but I felt my entire surroundings rippling around me, as if this new reality had yet to assert itself. In wonder, I waited for whatever was to come next. My anger faded to curiosity, and I remember thinking that this must be how it feels to everyone who dies. To me, it was hilarious. The same free will that made me furious at my so-called creator was the same thing that was making me too inquisitive to focus on that same rage.
A rude tugging and jerking were the next sensations I felt. If I had a mouth I would have yelled out, "Hey!", but all I could do was endure it helplessly as I found myself pulled into a sudden light. My first thought, as my eyes began to focus and my ears began to register sound, was the same thought that everyone would have in this situation. Heaven. I had made it to heaven even with all the dumb shit I'd pulled in my lifetime.
Instead of pearly gates, thought, I found a masked pair of eyes above me. An instant later I felt a fat, rubbery finger shove itself into my mouth and start wriggling around. Whatever it was doing, I suddenly found that I could breathe...that I had to breathe. The urge was irresistible and I filled my lungs with air that had a very odd twist to it. I had no idea what that twist was, but I knew instinctively that any time air has an actual taste to it, something was up.
I had absolutely no time to think on that, however, because I was being lifted into the sky and pivoted around to gaze at...at what I thought would be the afterlife. Even now, the realization is hard for me to dwell on. I saw doctors, what were presumably my parents, an obvious hospital room. I was a baby, I had been born again - as trite as that sounds - moments after dying in a hospital bed that for all I knew was one wing over in the same building. What was worse, all of that was starting to fade from my mind. Everything I knew from my past life was falling away like leaves in autumn. I squirmed, I wriggled, I fought as hard as I could to keep my entire fucking life from disappearing but I was utterly powerless. I began to cry...it was the only sound of protest I knew how to make, as everything I knew melted away. A moment later, I had forgotten why I was crying.
Anyway, as it turned out, I had re-entered the living world a good forty years after kicking off the mortal coil. Where my soul was, where I was, in between any of that is a total fucking mystery. Maybe there really is an afterlife, but it's so incomprehensible that the human mind just isn't smart enough to recall it. Who knows. (Nobody! Which is probably the whole point.)
The "future" is a lot like you'd expect it to be if you're a cynic. People's general health and the environment are kind of on life support. A can of soda costs five bucks. The economy is kind of wobbly. The president is still white and affluent, though apparently we had our first black president before I was born for the second time. Oh, and this is a neat thing, though: the internet is totally wireless and it's increasingly more difficult to function in normal society without it. It's having a weird effect on libraries. They're actually beginning to close some up because there's a big governmental push to just have one archive of printed material and not one in every town. Otherwise there's nothing too new to report. Same shit, different day. It's not a good world to bring kids into, I know that much. Can you imagine being brought up into a world where there's not enough drinkable water? And that being the only world you know? Fucking spooky.
I can accurately report that street drugs are still around in great supply, because that's how I came to remember my entire previous life, revelations and all. I don't know if it broke down some hidden chemical wall in my brain or what, but it all came back to me after this one trip in Grants Park. I wasn't functioning too well in the working world after that, I kept getting preoccupied with two lifetimes worth of lessons and conclusions. This was all last summer and I've pretty much been a shambles since then. I'm not working. I'm not doing much else but thinking. I'm way too scared to touch drugs anymore, I'm too afraid it'll bring more back. (Like where I was in between death and life, for instance.)
Sometimes I just have to laugh because I know the answer to The Ultimate Question and all that knowledge has done is kept me completely immobile. I look at other people now and wonder what they would do if they knew. I try and discern the personalities of my friends and family to see if I can tell what kind of person they were in their previous life. I've looked up my old family, but there's only grandkids left, and at this point they're too old themselves to be able to remember me clearly.
Some days I just feel completely trapped and I contemplate killing myself just to see when and where I'll wake up next. Maybe there wouldn't be a "next" time. After all, killing yourself would be actually taking your death into your own hands and choosing when you stop. And I'm sure God would hate if I did that. He wouldn't let me go anywhere after pulling that kind of stunt.
And oddly enough, I want to keep going. It feels like I was chosen for it, almost. Like I'm supposed to keep going and seeing humanity repeat itself over the centuries. And perhaps in time I'll be the only one who knows how to stop it. It could be Divine Purpose.
Or it could be the drugs. Jesus, I don't fucking know. I was hoping writing this all down would help clear it up a little, but all it's done is make my ass hurt. Wisdom of the Ages, that's me. Can't even hold down a job these days...
posted by greenland at 2:39 PM
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