What would you change if you could change anything?
Anything.
Yes.
I’d elect not to be here.
In this consultation.
On this planet.
You’ve been placed on suicide watch before. How serious an issue is that?
How serious an issue is suicide?
No. I mean do you think that you’re at risk.
I know what you meant. Maybe as long as you’re thinking about it you’re okay. Once you’ve made up your mind there’s nothing to think about.
So where would you be in this process?
I’d prefer not to be put on suicide watch.
I’d prefer it too.
How many people if they could snap their fingers and vanish would do so? Would you think. All trace of both being and ever having been.
I dont know. Less than you I would suppose.
To wish oneself never to have been. Again, not the same as no longer to be. Who is that?Anaximander?
The same for whom?
I’ve no idea.
You’re pretty much obliged to reckon that at the last suspiration the dying become not only acceptant of death but dedicated to it. That there must be some epiphany that makes it possible for even the dullest and most deluded of us to accept not only what is unacceptable but unimaginable. The absolute terminus of the world. Which will not wonder even for the briefest second what might have become of us.
And no comfort I suppose in the commonality of it.
Well. I suppose you could assign some sort of community to the dead. It doesnt seem like much of a community though does it? Unknown to each other and soon to anyone at all. Anyway. It’s just that those people who entertain a mental life at odds with that of the general population should be pronounced ipsofuckingfacto mentally ill and in need of medication is ludicrous on the face of it. Mental illness differs from physical illness in that the subject of mental illness is always and solely information.
Information.
Yes. We’re here on a need-to-know basis. There is no machinery in evolution for informing us of the existence of phenomena that do not affect our survival. What is here that we dont know about we dont know about. We think.
Would that be the supernatural?
I think it would just be the whereof.
The whereof.
The whereof one cannot speak.
Wittgenstein.
Very good. You’re going to run out of breadcrumbs.
The familiars. Now that they’ve taken a leave of absence does this come as a relief?
God knows. Maybe you imagine I always had it in my power to dismiss them. Or even that they were here at my invitation. And if that were true would I even know it.
Why not?
Maybe because inviting chimeras into your house is a knottier business than inviting neighbors in for tea. Or inviting them to leave. Of course having been asked to leave, the neighbors know that they’re not coming back. Which leaves them with a greater freedom to make off with the silver. What can a chimera make off with? I dont know. What did he bring? What did he bring that he might very well leave behind? The fact that he may be composed of vapor doesnt mean that when he leaves your house it will be the same as before he arrived.
from
Stella Maris