The Last Frontier

heaven and hell.

Since I was a small boy, I imagined death like a coffin. Inside this coffin was white screen, and a thin black line. At first, the line was flat, smooth, straight. As time went on, it became curved, wavy, bumpy, disturbed.

More and more the oscillations increased, the black line became jagged and sharp, like a rain of knives. The line was disjointed and broken, more rapidly and more quickly it moved up and down, without any organic continuity.

It jolted to and fro, up and down, more violently, shaking, like a seizure, until it reached the most extreme crescendo of movement, uncontrollable, unstoppable, filling the screen with black, turning completely dark.

Death.

In this coffin I was trapped, floating through the black emptiness of space. I could not see my own body or feel my own fingers. I could not hear the screams of my own voice. I was eternally separated from everyone. If life went on without me, I could not perceive it. I was not even sure that I existed. But there was a constant awareness of my sense of separation. This nightmare always seemed more frightening than Dante’s inferno, with prostitutes being eaten by crocodiles, or whatever else he imagined.