Vintage

06/02/01

When I woke up I was a little thirsty. I found my way to the internet, ordered one water, one coca cola with more ice than coca cola, and one coffee with milk. Then it was time to go to the beach. Nova Mar Bella. Some of the most beautiful 18 year old girls (they were 18, I say so.) I´ve ever seen were comfortably doing nothing in the sun with nearly nothing on. I averted my Anglo-puritan eyes, who wants to seem overly interested, and decided it was time to see what was going on in the Mediterranean. Discreetly, I buried my coin purse (that was once Erik´s) and busted down to my suit and black socks pulled up to my knees.

I cautiously approached, then walked in without pause. It was cold and the sun was not warm enough. After I got my breath back, my eyes floated back to the beach, which of course the girls were still all breasted out on. Figuring I better start training for my fight, I swam out. It got deep quickly. I started laughing, and it was the type of laugh that happens when you´re really cold and your torso is tight and the laughs come out sort of compressed.

I could see the bottom and I noticed some round disk-like thing and it made me nervous. That´s the thing about the ocean, there are other creatures in there that have all types of venom, teeth, tentacles, barbs, razor sharp tails, and laser beams. Most of them probably have 300 times the maneuverability that you do, not to mention they can see or smell or taste you better than you can. Well, maybe we can taste better, I don´t know. Anyway, I gave myself the struck by lightning talk and continued swimming.

Floating next to me on the surface were two butterfly wings. They were of different types of butterfly and no longer attached to the butterflies they belonged to. They were the same size. They were sort of stuck together end to end by water tension. As I was looking at the wings, water washed over my head. It was a terrible misfortune that I had been taking a breath and not more than a deciliter of the sea was sucked into my windpipe, which caused a coughing-gagging reflex that was immediately followed by a gasp for air. Of course, my head was submerged and this effort for air resulted in me violently drawing water directly into my lungs. This was all happening within a few seconds, so I was confused more than afraid.

I´ve spent a good part of my life preparing for death. Wondering about it, the details, the threshold, reconciling myself with god (there are no atheists in the foxholes, they say), wearing clean underwear, trying to understand why my grandmother told me to always wear clean underwear in case something happened when one would likely be soiling one´s self in clean underwear, leaving funny little postmortem messages in my wallet. Deciding whether those messages should make light of the situation of my death for whoever receives them in a tactful enough way that they would smile even though they were sad, or if they should be strange messages like, "I´m not dead, meet me at the monkeys in the Toronto Zoo on Dia de los Muertes." Actually, my example of the strange type of message might be a make-light-of.

I´ve thought about where my things would eventually end up. I´ve thought about graphical representations of the frequency of people who knew me´s allocated brain time spent remembering me on a timeline of say 100 years. I´ve thought of the idea that the sun will eventually expire and long before that our Earfth will no longer be inhabitable. At the rate things are going, it seems we´ll be able to adapt or create some artificial environment for our replication. Then again, it seems if not as likely more likely that some over-curious monkey will press the big red button that de-populates us. I should write a memo to the future and etch it into a gold plate with a picture of a cockroach and a monkey man and leave it at the bottom of the sea.

Anyway, back to the bottom of the sea..

I couldn´t breathe because my lungs had water inside them and were spasmodically trying to dispel it while simultaneously desperately drawing for air. I was under water, so instead of air I drew more water in. This didn´t go on for very long, and although I can hold my breath for three minutes when prepared my blood wasn´t getting the oxygen for my brain. For only a few seconds things got strange. It sort of felt like I had stared at the sun and then run into a dark room. It wasn´t dark, in fact it was bright white-blue like after someone takes a picture and you stared into the flash. Speaking of flashes, I love footage of atomic explosions so I perfectly understand our latent compulsion to press the big, red, nuclear variety button of de-populating us.

I was drowning. At this point I lost Consciousness proper. My diaphragm threw in the towel and although my tracheal muscles remained contracted and the remaining air in my lungs didn´t escape I sort of floated down with a little less bouyancy than would be needed to float statically. I was now dying. It didn´t take long, either, although that very statement became a bit out of context. Time was stretching out and becoming irrelevant. The best way to make Christmas morning come quickly is to get a spoonful of novahistimine from your grandmother and fall asleep. At least that´s what they say. Completing my death, right, so now I was in a state sort of like when you have just fallen asleep but you know it and it feels good. That was it. It was comfortable. Not cold, not scary, not visions of my life flashing before my eyes, none of that deep voice telling me to go towards the light. Maybe I died too quickly or maybe drowning is a different kind of death. It was basically like having the most comfortable sleep I´ve ever had.

After I sank to the bottom, a current must have washed me out further. I came to awareness when my soul peeled away from my body much like a cicada molts, leaving a very perfect replica of it´s form behind. Unlike a cicada though I didn´t have to split my back or anything. I came out inverted through my mouth and then my soul swallowed itself to turn itself right side out or whatever. I can´t tell you what I looked like. I don´t even know really. Souls don´t have the conventional ability to see oneself that we do. One´s soul can´t look in a mirror. Maybe they can describe each other to each other. Enough speculating on souls for now.

Now I didn´t know what to do. I didn´t even know where I was, but I assumed somewhere in the Mediterranean near Barcelona. Off in the distance I saw a sort of flashing. I headed over and was able to travel very quickly for the medium of travel being water. I got near and noticed a pretty big guy hunched over a pretty old TV from the 70s or something. He was playing Zelda. He had a sofa, but had taken all of the cushions off and constructed a sort of cockpit on the sea floor. I presume that this was so that he could see and focus on his Zelda better.

When I walked up he quickly switched it off and Gilligan´s Island was on. He acted really comfortable like he hadn´t just done anything. I noticed his trident and figured he was Poseidon. He acknowledged me and then stopped behaving "naturally". I didn´t know him and he didn´t know me, but we were cool with each other. He may have known otherwise, but it didn´t seem like anyone else was around. I asked him why he turned off Zelda really quickly and didn´t save his game. He said that he thought I was Jesus coming over and explained that he had borrowed Zelda from Jesus and Jesus forgot about it and he didn´t want Jesus to see it and ask him to return it. I understood.

We got on with the introductions, and I think he forgot my name for a while. I asked him what was going on in the undersea afterlife and he didn´t know what to say really, since he wasn´t concerned with newly dead identity searching. He told me that the sea was pretty great. I asked him what was up with the girls that were so painfully beautiful and naked on the beach. He laughed and said, "What.. oh, that´s just how they do here." I speculated on what the proper tact is in trying to talk to one of those naked beautiful girls and he cut me short. He said unless you already know them you´re probably going to be creepy. I told him that I didn´t even speak Spanish really and he quickly replied, "maybe you should´ve studied Spanish when you were alive."

At this point he was disinterested. Jesus called him up and he ignored me for a while while they talked about their new Linux distro, "Divinix". I interrupted and asked him if I could be resurrected. He said I have to speak with my deilogical representative. I asked him who that was and he thought I was a jackass. He said, "What were you raised as?" I answered "Christian." He went back to the phone and said to Jesus, "I gotta guy over here wants to be not dead." Jesus replied to Poseidon over the phone and then Poseidon said, "Jesus sez no problemo, but keep your eyes off of those breasts." I told him to thank Jesus for me. He said that Jesus would change my settings after he was done recompiling the new kernel.

I watched the rest of Gilligan´s island and then was seamlessly transmetaphysically placed back in the water on the surface in my body. I was glad to be back, although I feel like I didn´t see enough of Death. I´m sure I´ll be back. I went back to shore, dried off, and came back into town for a drink and to buy white clothing. Tonight corrido de toros.