Quadros
05-16-2009, 9:08 PM
This is an idea I've had swirling about my head for a while and with summer coming I've decided it's the perfect time to get it off my chest. It will be a pretty big deal, and rather long, so I'll write it in instalments. And yes I know all my previous 'projects' have lasted exactly one entry, but I really want to try and get this down. It will be longer than a short story, but not by much, And while I have a rough plan in my head and a very definite ending it will flow pretty much as it flows. Without further ado here's the intro/start. Critique away.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about heaven lately. I mean, not angels and god and trumpets heaven. I don’t think such a place exists. If it did, it wouldn’t be heaven to me. All that sparkling white and perfect pleasantness, that’s not paradise that’s a 50s advert for Daz. No, what I’m hoping for is much simpler. I hope that when you die, in that one freeing moment where your brain doesn’t have to worry about powering your body for even another microsecond, it might put all of its power into the beautiful power of imagination. And that single second just before death will carry on for ever and ever and ever and you can go back through your life and remake any and every decision you like. And your mind will play out the consequences of those actions, and you can live your life a million more times and every time you die you get to start afresh and it’ll all be real because the only way anything really exists to you is in your mind if you think about it. A famous philosopher said that. Aristotle probably. Or John Lennon.
There are two reasons such a heaven appeals to me. The first is that it’s almost plausible. I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in weird voodoo magic so this is the only way I can really see any form of afterlife existing. It’s almost scientific. The second is that it’s unconditional. You don’t have to have been a ‘good person’ to get in, there’s no qualification that requires you to live your life based on an instruction manual written in a long dead language and translated by a spastic. You just have to be alive at one point, and dead the next. Somehow I think that single quality is the saving grace for someone like me.
The doctor said I have ‘about’ six months. He said I ‘could’ make it to eight if I was lucky, but I very much fail to see how I would be lucky in that circumstance. Once you have a best before date existing beyond it holds no real attraction. Bread exists beyond its expiry date. But it’s still falling apart, rotting slowly as the growths that end it become increasingly and horrifyingly apparent. Once that point is past people avoid it don’t they? It becomes a chore and you never know when and whether it’s going to go, so you stop trusting it and leave it alone until it’s finally ruined and you wish, oh how you wish, you’d used it just once more. And that’s how I’ll be. If I’m honest, that’s how I am.
And so I have a schedule, I suppose. I certainly hope that my idea of heaven comes to be, but hope and belief are not synonyms and in the more likely eventuality of my rather more mundane demise I must put my affairs in order. Not financially or anything like that, of course my profession bred into me an appreciation for preparation for the unexpected and all of those official little things were tied up within a week. And so, with ‘about’ five months and three weeks left, I must try to live up to my heaven. Decisions must be re-evaluated. Mistakes must be undone or repaired. There is a great deal to do.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about heaven lately. I mean, not angels and god and trumpets heaven. I don’t think such a place exists. If it did, it wouldn’t be heaven to me. All that sparkling white and perfect pleasantness, that’s not paradise that’s a 50s advert for Daz. No, what I’m hoping for is much simpler. I hope that when you die, in that one freeing moment where your brain doesn’t have to worry about powering your body for even another microsecond, it might put all of its power into the beautiful power of imagination. And that single second just before death will carry on for ever and ever and ever and you can go back through your life and remake any and every decision you like. And your mind will play out the consequences of those actions, and you can live your life a million more times and every time you die you get to start afresh and it’ll all be real because the only way anything really exists to you is in your mind if you think about it. A famous philosopher said that. Aristotle probably. Or John Lennon.
There are two reasons such a heaven appeals to me. The first is that it’s almost plausible. I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in weird voodoo magic so this is the only way I can really see any form of afterlife existing. It’s almost scientific. The second is that it’s unconditional. You don’t have to have been a ‘good person’ to get in, there’s no qualification that requires you to live your life based on an instruction manual written in a long dead language and translated by a spastic. You just have to be alive at one point, and dead the next. Somehow I think that single quality is the saving grace for someone like me.
The doctor said I have ‘about’ six months. He said I ‘could’ make it to eight if I was lucky, but I very much fail to see how I would be lucky in that circumstance. Once you have a best before date existing beyond it holds no real attraction. Bread exists beyond its expiry date. But it’s still falling apart, rotting slowly as the growths that end it become increasingly and horrifyingly apparent. Once that point is past people avoid it don’t they? It becomes a chore and you never know when and whether it’s going to go, so you stop trusting it and leave it alone until it’s finally ruined and you wish, oh how you wish, you’d used it just once more. And that’s how I’ll be. If I’m honest, that’s how I am.
And so I have a schedule, I suppose. I certainly hope that my idea of heaven comes to be, but hope and belief are not synonyms and in the more likely eventuality of my rather more mundane demise I must put my affairs in order. Not financially or anything like that, of course my profession bred into me an appreciation for preparation for the unexpected and all of those official little things were tied up within a week. And so, with ‘about’ five months and three weeks left, I must try to live up to my heaven. Decisions must be re-evaluated. Mistakes must be undone or repaired. There is a great deal to do.