So live that when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan that moves to that mysterious realm where each shall take his place in the silent halls of death, thou go not like a quarry slave, scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.
(William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis)
This is hell, down here, the underground of this web site. Of the five billion people on earth, you are probably one in a billion who may come this far into the labyrinth I have dug. That is, besides the creepy "crawlers" you find squirming around in dark places like this. (The content will never be finished for any of my pages for as long as I may live.) Who are you, here echoing with the cries of curiosity in the caverns of my mind? That is, besides the mute spiders seeking dumb testimony to my existence. Who you are I cannot imagine.
Who would want to go to hell? Alexander would. There was no other concept for him. But he had to face the rigors of the journey. It took him several days to realize that he was surely going to die. Then it took him several more to get the job done. Our contemporary medical investigators have determined that the paralysis ascending from his extremities may have made him appear to be dead when his mind may still have been active. In that time, he may have heard the violence among his survivors swirling about him, and his delirium from his illness may have magnified his spiritual convictions to the extreme. His body was reported not to have begun to decay for an unusual time, six days, after his "death", before the Egyptian embalmers started their task. Thus I stretch my imagination to not unreasonable lengths.
If this were an opera or a film, the dramatic possibilities are great. Easier on film than the stage. But I have it on the stage. I am sorry no one is interested. I have communicated only with mutes.
I will use the ancient Greek conception of hell to arrange these final pages. To fill them, I have put down some sentiments and poetry I have written.
Last updated on November 22, 2004