Posthumous Life

It's time, W. says. No: it's after time. It's late. We're living on its lateness. We live a posthumous life.

Perhaps this is already hell, W. muses. Perhaps we already live in hell – is that it? They – the ones we once were – lived out their whole lives somewhere else, on earth – on the real earth. No doubt they committed terrible crimes. No doubt they were guilty of the worst, and we're what's left, serving out their sentence having forgotten everything … Hell, but perhaps it's heaven, for is life really so bad? Not now, not today, on this pleasant afternoon …

But perhaps, W. muses on another occasion, we're souls waiting to be reborn. Perhaps this is a great waiting room, this the time before a dentist's appointment, where nothing very important happens; you leaf through a magazine, you gaze out of the window …

But they've forgotten to call our names, haven't they? They've forgotten we are here, in the eternal waiting room. We've been left to ourselves, like abandoned children. And our seriousness is only a sham seriousness; our apocalypticism is only a kind of dressing up – and all our reading – the books of our philosophers – is only of the articles in some gossip magazine …