He wandered in a daze, feeling neither young nor old, substantial yet somehow not there at all. A voice had told him he must write as if the last day in his life was at hand. It was one of those desert island questions, a gotcha hypothetical, yet now he could not be sure whether he was already gone or if his sleep-walking state was due to the effect of the request on his psyche. He was not sure he could write. But then he saw the two pens and the open notebook. And he knew that he was meant to comply with the instruction he had received, even if they were not really his last words. It was a now thing. A live-as-if thing. A step removed from reality. A mind game. A preparation. A plumbing. The pen was running out of whatever they put in it, so the words I am trying to read are indistinct. The first sentence is, "I am a nomad of the universe." Then it becomes very indistinct, something like, "I would like to be remembered", and then something about having seen truth up close and that it was "splendid". I think he was saying that nothing he had done mattered. But seeing something splendid did. It was as if he would conclude his life not with justifications or regrets, but with a wisp of recollection, not described, a positive, a reality. Yes, somehow to see reality was the key. Nothing else mattered. Not history nor even literature. If one could focus on what was there, what is there, and keep doing that, even a tiny percent of all one's conscious time, one might have something to exult about on that last day. A sort of rosebud key to everything.
 |
|
|
