Frumph.NET

Here I am, heading to the store in one of the many overly hot days in Las Vegas.   I hate it here where I live.   I can only afford the cheapest area to live in.   Next year I turn 50 and I have lived a full life, growing up in a loving military family.

My father was in the Air Force, we moved from base to base when I was younger; finally settling in California for my teen years.   I read a lot, especially fantasy and science-fiction stories.  Curious about everything, I always wanted to know how things worked.

Being the youngest of several siblings even while being the baby of the family my parents never coddled or spoiled me, they believed that learning by doing is very important and were still loving and attentive.

I had a good high school life, then in college I messed up.   I found myself feeling that I was looking through the eyes and my life was on auto-pilot, the decisions that I made were not the same as previously.  Maybe it was because I was so far away from my family and alone here?  I don’t know.

Relationships were fleeting, just someone showing any interest in me at all I hooked up with them, this mentality of mine didn’t understand relationships apparently and as my thinking why did I do that?  It was as if I had no control.

For the last 30 years as if in haze, a foggy mind that was disabled with prescription anti-psychotics;  I woke up.

I entered the nearby supermarket so I can buy some cat food it was as if epiphany over and over again; a flooding of memories all surged at me at once.  My mind racing for an explanation was flooded with the events that I was too delirious to recognize my own.

I had a child, or several – who knows.  My pernicious behavior at least gave me one.   For the most part it was as if my foggy mind and my real ‘self’ merged together as one and I was finally back in control.

But then it was too late.  I was having a heart attack, cardiac arrest in the entrance way of this store.  My cat… I’ve had her for 20 years; she was old and pooped everywhere except her box, but I loved her as my only family left.  I wonder who will take care of her when i’m gone?

Rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance as the paramedics use injections and defibrillators to restart my heart my heart started to beat again, I am going to live!

The EMT while pulling his mask off looked into my eyes and asks me.  “When you die, what kind of world would you like to live in?”

A semi truck who wasn’t paying attention to the flashing lights slammed straight into the ambulance.  The needle in the other EMT’s hands plunged straight into my head and that was it.

[ So this is death? ]

[ Of course it is, the only thing I have left is what’s in my mind. ]

[ I cannot feel, literally there’s no sensations at all but what is in my mind. ]

[ How long have I been here? ]

[ How long will I stay here? ]

[ I want to tell my son that I love him one last time. ]

[ I want to apologize to my mother who raised us with love and affection. ]

[ Maybe i’m just paralyzed?  but why can’t I see anything? ]

“When you die, what kind of world would you like to live in?” (Remembering the EMT)

[ What kind of question is that? ]

[ I would like to live in a world with plenty of vegetation and tree’s, forests, lakes and rivers.. plains with beautiful flowers, vast oceans, seas and skies.. unpolluted air and majestic scenery everywhere. ]

[ Whats this feeling?  Something is happening.. I can feel the presence of something happening but I can’t see it. ]

… I will myself to have eyes so I can see, I remember how my eyes felt physically and my sense of vision although a bit blurry started to come back.

After the blurriness fades I start to see the stars in the sky but it wasn’t the sky, I am looking around at everything I could, trying to find a reference to my position.

[ I am in in space!   Looking down at a glowing orb of a green planet below me… the Earth looks so beautiful from here. ]

[ This isn’t the Earth .. It’s much larger and the landmasses are different. ]

I tried to see the shapes of the continents but nothing I could recognize, there were at least 2 large land areas and about 5 smaller ones with oceans all around them, it looks like there is about 50% land to 50% ocean.   Squinting or what I think is squinting I then notice the abundant of islands.

[ I can’t tell the size of something from up here. ]

Willing myself to move, approaching the planet in front of me I got closer, close enough that I could clearly this worlds rotation and weather.

“When you die, what kind of world would you like to live in? (Remembering the EMT)

[ Being dead .. this is my world I want to live in? ]

I couldn’t think of anything else.

[ If i’m still alive in a coma then I need to pass the time while waiting to break free of it right? ]

Searching while the planet rotates beneath me, I notice in the upper hemisphere on the right of one of the largest continent connecting to the largest ocean was a weird set of mountain ranges that looked like a sideways U with the open end connected to the ocean.

There are many rivers coming down from the mountains forming a extremely huge lake. The lake at it’s east side formed a river that goes all the way to the ocean with all of the tributaries from the mountains connect to it along the way.  In the center of that lake was an island that connected right with the mountains and a river again flowing through it that connects to the lake.

[ That’s not an island but a peninsula. .. and it doesn’t look as if it was a coincidence that the planet formed that way. ]

Well since this is in my mind of where I would like to live in, in my next life I probably made it.

[ Lets take a closer look then. ]

I will myself to get closer and closer, entering the atmosphere I feel the clouds around me, sensations and feelings of my body that I didn’t have before start coming back to me.