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"I get it. The final death
is not the first death."
"How's that again?"
"Internally, he expires.
Step one; it can happen while you are to all appearances, especially
to yourself, still here--I mean still there."
"Devilish!'
"Does he not notice anything?"
"It sometimes happens he
thinks he has just been informed that he is not going to die."
"Say what?"
"Twice devilish!"
"´It's the very devil
of misinterpretation."
"Say, does anyone receive
this postal and not misinterpret it?"
"Hard to know that."
"That's why the phone stops
ringing, and nobody comes over. Nobody gives him any information,
or advice, anymore. Nobody criticizes him the way they used to like
to so much!"
"That's bad, if nobody is
criticizing you."
"They don't carry him out
until . . . years later. During which interval he maintains the illusion
(to himself) that he has been still alive, even very alive. Like .
. . accomplished."
"Good story!"
"He was just left watching
a basketball game, nobody on earth aware of his supposed existence,
all those he had known died themselves or forgotten about him."
"This is supreme. The ironies
abound."
"As ironies will!"
"Excuse me. Who are you talking
about?"
"Sometimes you walk by the
living room and there is no one there, but the television. He left
it on, some basketball game is playing but no one is perched, or slouched,
on the couch."
"Apparently, he lost interest?"
"Or died. But we didn't hear
the ambulance this time."
"Yes, ambulances are always
taking people away and not bringing them back."
"The question is: did he
see the end of the game?"
"Well, obviously not. That
would be too much like a story. When this is . . . truth!"
"Meanwhile, other people
do actually exist."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well you spend all your
thinking about death and what might happen afterwards on yourself.
You never consider that you are also responsible for other people's
. . . afterlife."
"You figure they are on their
own at that point."
"Not me. I've always thought
I was being followed. On the one hand. My ancestors clawing at me.
And more pertinent to a headlong consciousness, I was always considering
who°o might be fellow travelers in the . . . great beyond!"
'This is exciting. To consider,
who might be fellow travelers? I had only, up to this point, equipped
the others to last the one lifetime, I was snuffing them out at the
finish line."
"When no one is left, then
the awareness gasps. The little man goes to the cupboard and finds
it bare. He out-thought them all. Ha!"
"Could we get off that story?"
"Could we stay on the same
subject for once?"
"Could we get another subject,
and stay on that?"
"Got the jitters?"
"Got the Fritos!"
"Just being witty?"
"Even in such a grand funk,
we are snack-wise."
"Folks, this may be importantly
the place to introduce my long-lost Leahy correspondence, which I'll
have to paraphrase of course, since I brought no luggage., This is
lead insensibly, I mean sensibly, to a pretext for introducing the
Kierkegaard question, which I think I indicated would be coming up
surreptitiously anyway. Though I'm not sure what I've said and not
yet said, so if I repeat myself, slap me."
"I'll slap you anyway."
"What does that word mean?
Surreptitious? I swear, in all my long and exhaustive studies I have
never focused on what that word, surreptitious, means."
"His long and exhaustive
studies."
"His nights forestalling
the dawn."
"His legendary self."
"I'll get a dictionary."
"While you're at it . . ."
"The Kierkegaard question,
right now being heard by petition, before the Judges at the courthouse,
has fundamentally to do with the rights of interest of people who
have died, as to what rightfully they might be able to learn of themselves,
their legacy or the fate of their presence while alive, from the other-world
vantage where they are--if you what I mean so far--"
"So there is a Courthouse?"
"Yes sir! Dying may put an
end to one's life, or earth-duty as someone just said, for sure, for
you don't wander down to the cafe anymore and discuss over a cappuccino
the transcendental essence of existence, for sure; but it surely doesn't
end the person in question, who might have rights. Which is the point.
What are the rights of these who were so life-involved, as few are
but, in this case, lest I lose the thread--if, if I say, if we simply
posit them before some higher tribunal making the request to know
what happened. See what I mean any°body?"
"It's the Trial of Soren
Kierkegaard, in the afterlife. On the marquee, outside the courthouse,
it says: Today: Or no, it says: Ongoing! The Trial of SK."
"The gallery is full."
"He has petitioned! He wants
to know what happened to himself, historically. And not because, so
much, he wants to actually know that--but because he wants to know
whether he has rights to know that. That is, he is calling the question
of the connection between the dead and the living--but only in this
one polite regard, so as to get it on the table, the big table!, but
not to upset any realities you know."
"Isn't that just so Kierkegaardian
of him!"
