It's hard to express. I wear glasses. To see things. But what do I see?
I've reached my dying day in The Visit to Jim's Fifth Chakra. Been in jail for ninety days in Dodge City, Kansas and today's the day The Hangin' Judge, Judge Roy Bean, is going to sentence me to be shot through the heart and hanged.
It's much too involved to explain -- not really -- but now is not the time to explain it. This is not an explanation.
It's just hard to express. How am I going to die? Am I going to die? I hadn't thought so until just recently. So the way it goes on, it lasts for more than a day. But of course everything has lasted for days and days, ninety of them. And the last day, if you think about it, lasts for maybe, well -- say 20 pages, just a guess -- could be read in 20 minutes. That little time out of the day -- one 72nd of a day. But it lasts for more than one day. How many days I cannot say yet, any more than how many pages.
So you have all this time being spent, and you have time within time. I spend two hours driving down to San Francisco. Within that two hours I dictate a total of 5.38 into my voice recorder. Within that 5.38 you may have a day's events, or more, or less. Unknown.
So anyway, I've never had a dying day before, so it's got me a little bit on edge. Like the end in which I die, which I hadn't conceived of before -- now I have to decide. Do I die? I hadn't thought so. But . . . .
What would THAT feel like? I'm not really going to die when I die, am I?