CHAPTER ONE

it was a stick figure with a square head whose face was a tv screen ... it was the first thing I saw after I died ... on the screen was the face of a woman whose eyes were closed ... I think it was my soul ... I saw a plane on a steep ascent from JFK ... I hoped she was aboard ... in the meantime here was I a collection of disembodied thoughts not so much condemned as allowed to wander in the world of thought ... with perhaps enough time to get to meet all the ideas I had so long admired ... as the wind can ruffle the pages of a book as the light can shine through one of them so I might pass a resident alien in the life of the mind ... there were three ideas ... I will not say people ... not yet ... I wanted to meet most of all ... the magician whose manipulation was a seduction ... the general whose act was a logical conclusion ... the saint who of the three was the most practical ... each one in his historical appearance I must claim for a stranger ... for after all I'd only heard a few things about them ... though I was under obligation life-long to follow with them in the pursuit not of happiness but of heaven ... for they were power law and love