dEATH-lIFE-lIFE-dEATH7*

The man in the hat awoke one morning and thought, what if I am dead but don’t know it? What if I awakened dead, not living, how would I know the difference? What if what I took to be living was death, but I confused the two, put the one in front of the other, got them mixed up, muddled? What if death, being dead, is just life, but in reverse, death-life-life-death? Could one live with that, he thought, having it backwards, in reverse? Maybe I’m dead and waiting to wake up, to begin living, death-life. If I have this all backwards, back to front, he thought, what then? Where to begin, how to begin, why to begin, so much turmoil and puzzlement, addles the mind, he thought, like soppy porridge. This type of thinking made the man in the hat wonder, why did Charlton Heston hold his nose when he dove out of the sinking spaceship into the reservoir? Strange indeed, not a volitional thought in his head, Charlton Heston’s head, sad indeed: mercenary sad. The man in the hat, the broad brimmed hat, felt that life had neither reason nor rhyme, but was simply a random series of reoccurring events, some occurring more often than others. Charlton Heston held his nose because he was a sissy, not because of some greater ontological wherewithal, some categorical imperative. If he recalled, the man in the hat, Charlton Heston likes pistols and long-rifles, stun-guns and carbines, creosote and cannon powder, residues of a poor education and a middling intellect.