DIALOGUE OF THOSE WHO ARE FREE OF TIME

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Pretty day huh?

Oh, isn’t it?

So how long you been dead?

Pretty good while. Hard to tell, um —

I know what you mean. After awhile . . .

Exactly. Running out a clock which does not exist. That really irritates me, the one thing that irritates me about non-existence. No clocks. Experience runs together like, like —

Amor fati — even when your fate is to no longer be among the living, all those swarming up above — is the motto now, but I have to admit: I do wish to be back — if just momentarily — among the living. Do you?

It’s a rather personal question, but yes, often (I guess it’s often, who can tell here) I do wish to be back. I guess I’d have to make up for one badly-lived life doing better stuff in another life. I was really into clocks and timepieces when I was among the living.

Things I could undo, sentences I could unsay. Not speak. Pomposities of verbiage I never unfurled.

I was into time. Clocks. Collections of rare watches.

Well-l-l. [Jed Clampett-style] Clocks! Really only made for modern man around the 14th century CE.

What were you into, when you were alive?

I was a writer.

I see.

I tried to write down the stories of people who would never write down or even try to tell their own stories —

That’s — uh —

— but the backlog got enormous. And as people grew quieter and quieter, more reserved, it became difficult to know them, to figure out what their stories actually were. So then you invent as best you can.

Novels?

Novels. Yes that’s what I did before this. No point in it now, is there?

Not much.

See ya later, kid.

I ain’t no kid.

© 2020 Thomas N. Dennis