Julie and I were special agents. We were in New Brunswick, Canada, in the winter. We were searching for some sort of entity – and had only a vague notion of what it was.
We were inside a small sort of lab space, somewhat on a primitive scale. A smaller window allowed a vast field of snow; in a half-circle shape from our vantage point. The field was encompassed by tall, dark, trees that had lost their leaves in winter dormancy. At the distant, center, arc of the field stood a wooden shed. A small foot-path cleared in the snow from our lab extended toward the shed.
Julie was recounting some fast-fading experience she’d had. She’d been with a man in the shed. She thought he had a shovel but her recollection of the experience was hazy. We thought this was important toward finding the entity. She and I discussed it a little and she became very determined to walk out to the shed. I could not join her and I had a lot of misgivings about her going.
I tried my best to convince her to do otherwise. She went anyway. After Julie left down the path to the shed, a woman came into the lab. I felt that she worked with us but I did not recognize her. She asked me where Julie had gone and I recounted the events in order.
The woman became very concerned and told me that Julie absolutely could not go to the shed because the thought (someone did certainly think this) was that the man Julie had been with, was exposed to a high level of radiation and in his company, Julie may have been as well. The someone that thought this, suspected the radiation was in some manner connected with the shed. It was too late, we couldn’t (reason for this? yes, but I don’t know) go to the shed via the path and hence couldn’t get Julie to come back.
I was at the counter of a small bar. Still winter and still in New Brunswick (NB seems to have become a recurring haven of safety on the 3rd and 4th when faced with misgivings about future danger). Turning to my left, I met an old man sitting next to me. I thought at first that he wasn’t the sort of person I’d easily strike up a conversation with but somehow I had done just that. I explained to him that I was looking for an entity of some sort. After my explanation I knew the man I was talking to, Martin Heidegger. He promised to tell me what death is.
He said he knew because he was dead. He gave me a few ordinary facts about the body at demise. He said something, on which my whole vantage point as a being having a drink at a bar immediately changed. I was a disembodied being, though without boundaries to constitute this being. I had a clear view (though this is difficult to explain as there wasn’t anything in which the view could enter in order to say that it was “me” having this view.
In any case, I had this clear view into that same snow-field. This time however, the perspective was high in the air. I looked down through the leaf-less branches of the trees. At that instant, the earthquake felt the room trembling.