electrocution and splat

It was "taco day" at lunch today, a very popular day in the big corporate cafeteria. So we were all sitting there at lunch and this guy Mike asks the group: "What if you could get struck by lightning in a catastrophic way.....and then immediately have everything go back to normal? Would you do it to see what it felt like?"

This guy, Scott, quickly answered: "Absolutely. I would."

I asked "What would be the point of that---to feel the pain?"

"No," Mike said, "it would be like nothing happened."

"Um, okay, well then really what's the point? If you're not going to feel anything at all, then you're not experiencing anything---other than being able to say to people: 'I was struck by lightning once but I couldn't even describe it to you.'

Here's something different: how about if you could free fall from a huge skyscraper and go splat on the pavement below...breaking every bone in your body and your skull crushing like a grape? How about that? Would you try that if you could just get up and everything be back to normal?"

Mike said: "I knew this guy who jumped out of a plane once and he went to pull the parachute and it didn't open. He just fell out of the sky....all the way down. And the weird thing, he said when he landed it was just like nothing; just like somebody turned the lights out and it was pitch black and then it felt like being pummeled by a thousand pillows."

"No pain at all?"

"No, he said there wasn't. I mean, he did break every bone in his body, though, but he lived."

"How did he fall out of a freaking plane and not die?"

"Well, he fell in a bog, like three feet of water...so that helped."

So I was sitting there thinking about dying. I guess we all were. Or, maybe we were thinking about pain and the extreme pain that goes along with certain types of dying. And what if we could feel that...taste that...touch that...and live? What would we know?

Taco day. Lunch. The sun broke through the clouds today for the first time in three. I don't want to fall out of a plane and crush to death. I don't want to be struck by lightning and feel nothing.

There's poetry falling from the sky. I'll drown, and live, in that.