It's the way these things go for those who survive: Too many events are suspended in the fog of the surreal. The sequence of events rubberizes and freezes clocks, stretching out and shrinking time. Gravity is too variable, but almost always heavy-handed -- trying to run, or move quickly, makes one feel submerged to the neck in bread pudding.
This deathly period boils it down, right down to bare-bones existence. Life, living, or feeling alive might come later. For now, I am able to merely vote "present."
At one point, a macabre thought occurs: A little Death, where it touches Life, can be good for you. This notion seems both a simple truth and simultaneously out of place, more Poe than Thoreau, more Carlin than Darwin.
But here's the thing: Death forces you to compress all remaining time, experiences, and life events, down to the minimalist's most sublime achievements and aches. The clear advancing of Death forces discarding of chaff, encourages gorging on wheat.
On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities,...
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