when did you start to be aware of death? i was thinking in the shower. sometimes i get that feeling in by belly of a sudden drop—out of my body—through a kind of nether-body space. the feeling you could die, that you will, the feeling of dying almost, the leaning back into your body, into your life. i think i feel i'm alive. not i'm still alive, but i have a life. in the shower i thought first you become aware of death, maybe great grandpa's, but he seemed almost a ghost before he died, and he was so unbelievably old, it seemed a minor transition. you didn't wonder to what, it was elemental, a transition to space. he already seemed like he was a beloved object in the deep yellow space of the aged photographs of the space that was already deep yellow with dust motes floating around his body in his easy chair. then you knew the animals on your plate were dead and that you were implicated in their death in some impersonal way. then there was that kid, that girl, who died, and you realized how close death was getting. it was getting personal. you never believed a dead person went to heaven or hell really though the idea that you ceased to be they made scary, and maybe if they said nothing it would have been anyway. you could go on forever about death, it's banal and fascinating. but i'm getting hungry talking about death here.