First Part
- For the very first time, happening during a winter, I came to Pridmore. I had followed the footprints in the snow. I decided the spacing was regular enough to be the mark of humans. The footprints disappeared before they exited snow, so I assumed they were erased. I looked for a reason, looked at Pridmore. It had two unequal halves, a small space between for a parking lot. The two buildings could be staring at each other. It looked intentionally disused. I supposed someone was inside.
- I approached one of the front doors and pulled, then pushed. It was locked. I peaked through the door's window to see a barricade. I knocked, thinking of nothing better to do, and no one answered. I went to a window nearby, tapped on it, waited, looked at another window, tapped on it as well––waited, went back to the front door, stood in front of it, pulled and pushed the handle, found it still locked. I repeated in any order. After minutes, I had approached one of the windows to spot a paper flattened against the glass, and a hand behind it. On the paper it read, "Remove your hood and goggles." I was wearing those things, so I removed them––waited, blinked. The person inside tapped on the glass, flipped the paper, which now read, "Proceed to the door and put your hand through the slot." I did that.
- I thought they would cut my hand off. (Now-after, it seems a ridiculous anxiety.) I felt hands take mine and I wanted to pull back. I couldn't see who it was. Someone was feeling my hand, the fingers, pressing down on those little bones, pushing on nail, jabbing and manipulating palm. I kept my hand loose. Then they released my hand, some things were moved, and they opened the door for me.
- They were really fond of touching my shoulders, though it wasn't affection, as they let me in. I can't quite remember who did the touching, nor who stood in front of me (there was someone important greeting me there). After that they lead me into a hall where a great number of people moved about. Only those already facing the right way looked up to notice me. A woman approached me and said she would follow me around for the next few days.
- She followed me at her stable, far distance, which was about twelve meters. If the room was smaller than that and I was in it, she would stand behind a wall. If I needed to go somewhere or know a thing, be it the right door, the right bed, she would point. For the times she could not point and had to speak, she sometimes spoke at a volume hard to hear, or left a daily letter, or had someone else say the thing. I assumed a time would come when an accident would happen, or I'd surprise her, and I would find myself alongside her––behind her in the line for food, or going opposite ways through the same door at the same moment. She seemed deliberate to avoid chance, to avoid specifically me. Always being physically afar from someone brings up to the mind's conception a misapprehension of the face. When moved close the face becomes the real person. I could not really see what she looked like. She looked at me as if something was unhealthy about me, and at her far distance, she knew how I really appeared.
Second Part
- For the second time I came to Pridmore. It felt nothing like the first. There was no winter and it was night. A diffused light was across the windows, which made everything noticeable. I approached one of the dark windows and tapped on the glass. I opened the door, pushed the barricade. I stared down the black hall to see a thinness of light. I went there.
- I thought about how this second time was different, how no one was yet seen, not a person at the door nor a note and palm pressed to the window. I felt for some reason dejected by this absence. No one held hand my through a slot.
- Before me was the door with the light underneath. I thought I had been quiet and thought I could stand there a while, guessing of who was inside. But I opened the door.
- Four people were inside, around a lamp, sitting, talking, being pensive––then, looking to me, talking to me. I tried to recognize someone. There was this woman who could be the same one from years ago. :I sat down next to her, stared at her face. She could be anyone.
- They were talking about death. It didn't have the theme of fear. An argument or reasoning had been going around. The women next to me proposed it to me.
- "There is an either-or at the end of life," she said. "Either death is something or death is nothing."
- I said alright. The other three listened.
- "When we look at our own death, the either-or matters. When observers look at another's death, the result is the same: the body has stopped moving."
- I said alright.
- "You are about to die. If death is something, then something occurs. If death is nothing, then nothing occurs. How can anyone say that nothing occurs? Nothing is not a happening; it is a no-thing. If I die and death is nothing, it must only be that I never died at all. I can never experience such a thing as no-such a thing."
- I told her that it's the same idea as before life, not a thing that happens. Or it's like a dreamless sleep. She said yes.
- "The only thing that may happen in death is something. If death, if being dead exists, then death is something. If death is nothing, then death never happens, and we are always alive, as far as consciousness can tell."
- I notice there is only a certain way of look at this in order for it to make any sense. I asked her, not with seriousness, if she wanted to kill herself. She said there would be pain, a lot if she was sloppy. But then, what?
- "Would time freeze in that last moment of dying?" I could see she was unsure. The woman would struggle with the concept of nothing all she wanted and come to no conclusion. "What is there in nothing? I would move along instantly to the next something, and there could be no in-between. If at the point of death there's nothing, the point hasn't been reached, because nothing is there to reach. Existence is invincible."
- It felt at the time to be a ridiculous conversation to have. It seems impossible for death to remove the qualities of life––and as best as I can think, leaving the consciousness alone to continue to another something, or for nothing to happen at all.
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