‘It’s so easy to die, isn’t it?’

‘How so?’

‘You just step off this pavement and onto the road now, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.’

‘Hmm.’

‘You’re actually feet away from death now, you know.’

‘Well, if you start thinking that way, then we’re always feet away from death. When you stand beside a railway track, when you lean over a roof, when you cook your food, you’re always feet away from death, you know.’

‘When I cook my food?’

‘Yeah, if you sat on the oven for a minute you might be dead. So when you are feet away from it cooking, you are feet away from death.’

‘That’s a stupid idea.’

‘You introduced it.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I’ll tell you something?’

‘Yeah?’

‘We’re never feet away from death, you know, even when we are standing on a pavement and there’s cars whizzing by at ninety miles an hour. You know you’re dead if you step off that pavement there, because the cars won’t be able to stop. You stand feet away from it, and yet you are more than that distance away from death. You are miles, legions, universes away from your death.’

‘How’s that?’

‘It’s easier to make a trip around the world, you know, than walk those few feet and step off the pavement. You’ll never let yourself do it. It’s impossible. However much possible it may be physically, when it comes to what’s possible in the inner world, it’s only a trip around the world that is. Those few feet are impossible for you to walk. It’s harder, much harder than going for a vacation on Mars. It’s not a few feet, kid, it’s millions of uncharted, unchartable miles before you, those few feet. Your mind won’t walk it, it refuses to have anything to do with it, and it’s just a huge unwalkable gap in the end. It’s not three feet; it’s a whole uncrossable universe. You’re as safe at home as when you’re standing beside a busy street like that. In either case you are the same distance away from death. Now if you’re talking about this guy that comes along and bumps into you and you fall onto the street and an eighteen-wheeler comes along and cooks applesauce with your head, well, that won’t of course happen at home. But you can see, I’m talking about conscious decision over here. It’s as unlikely that you’ll take the car from your home and drive up the mountain road and drive straight through the fence over the cliff as it is that you’ll walk these few feet and step off this pavement here. You see my point now?’

‘Hmm…’

‘Well?’

‘What?’

‘What do you think of it? What do you think of my explanation?’

‘You talk a lot.’

‘Huh?’

‘A real lot. And that too trash. You talk a lot of trash. I need to get home now. Bye.’

‘Hey! Turn around! Don’t walk backwar—’

 

SLAM.

1Life.