Maybe we should move on. As you like to say.

All right.

A long silence. Can I ask what you’re thinking?

I’m not. Thinking.

There’s some question as to whether or not that’s possible.

Yes, well. I work at it. You can stop talking to yourself of course. But you can only do so by talking to yourself. Counting your breaths or reciting a mantra. Thinking is harder.

Thinking and talking are different.

Talking is just recording what you’re thinking. It’s not the thing itself. When I’m talking to you some separate part of my mind is composing what I’m about to say. But it’s not yet in the form of words. So what is it in the form of? There’s certainly no sense of some homunculus whispering to us the words we’re about to say. Aside from raising the spectre of an infinite regress—as in who is whispering to the whisperer—it raises the question of a language of thought. Part of the general puzzle of how we get from the mind to the world. A hundred billion synaptic events clicking away in the dark like blind ladies at their knitting. When you say: How shall I put this? What is the this that you are trying to put? Maybe we should move on. As you say I like to say.

What would you change if you could change anything?

Anything.

Yes.

I’d elect not to be here.

In this consultation.

On this planet.

You’ve been placed on suicide watch before. How serious an issue is that?

How serious an issue is suicide?

No. I mean do you think that you’re at risk.

I know what you meant. Maybe as long as you’re thinking about it you’re okay. Once you’ve made up your mind there’s nothing to think about.

So where would you be in this process?

I’d prefer not to be put on suicide watch.

I’d prefer it too.

How many people if they could snap their fingers and vanish would do so? Would you think. All trace of both being and ever having been.

I dont know. Less than you I would suppose.

To wish oneself never to have been. Again, not the same as no longer to be. Who is that? Anaximander? The same for whom?

I’ve no idea.

You’re pretty much obliged to reckon that at the last suspiration the dying become not only acceptant of death but dedicated to it. That there must be some epiphany that makes it possible for even the dullest and most deluded of us to accept not only what is unacceptable but unimaginable. The absolute terminus of the world. Which will not wonder even for the briefest second what might have become of us.

And no comfort I suppose in the commonality of it.

Well. I suppose you could assign some sort of community to the dead. It doesnt seem like much of a community though does it? Unknown to each other and soon to anyone at all. Anyway. It’s just that those people who entertain a mental life at odds with that of the general population should be pronounced ipsofuckingfacto mentally ill and in need of medication is ludicrous on the face of it. Mental illness differs from physical illness in that the subject of mental illness is always and solely information.