The Last Picture Show
What will it be - the last thing that you see?
What will it be, the last thing that I see?
There. Last blink. There.
Burned hot onto the mirrored plate of my retina like some daguerreotype of truth, stillness holding, a moment set and fixed within the shuttering eyelid of my demise. The last thing I see at the moment of my death.
What will I see?
What will it be?
Will it be the grain of a leaf, its intricate patterns of veins and tributaries waving chlorophyllic goodbyes as I fade to black? The intense green of its envious farewell at my checkout as it gulps yet another lungful of this broken world. Will it inhale my last exhale?
Will that be the last thing that I see?
Will it be the rough tongue of a goat bleating? The tooth of a lion? A wisp of a cloud moving lazily across the bluest of skies as I recline upon a grassy embankment where I have been thrown as a rag doll off my bicycle?
Will the last thing I see be the bubble of sea foam, sprawling and churning in the shore break as it washes my brain of consciousness and salts up the many wounds of my heart?
“But I’m a strong swimmer,” I hear myself say, frowning in death as the image proving otherwise is uploaded to the cloud.
The fingerprint of Death reaches into the iris, swirls and whorls. Ridges and valleys. Something for the detectives to investigate. Something for the dust to dusts.
I spy with my last dying eye, something beginning with alphabet.
Will it be the grain of a leathery neck, veins straining as bile shouts ring out, entering an orchestral echo chamber of an infinite and frantic no? The a to z of textbook anger. Spittle flinging, my eye catching a mote of its throaty yawl and brawl in a prism of light.
Will my mind’s lens think the violence beautiful? Will the photographer adhere to the rule of thirds? Where will it put the horizon? How will my last dying eye frame the last thing I see if that thing be evil?
Will the last thing I see be a face of hate? Or of duty performed? The scorn of order and time in a wrinkle of fabric. A cloth held by a sweaty, tattoo-knuckled hand. A baton swinging to farewell my protest.
Or will it be—the last thing that I see—the glass of a windshield shattering in fractured mathematical randomness? The white-flash impact of an airbag deploying with sudden fury? The headlights of a car entering the hollow box of my camera obscura to write the word astigmatism upon the back wall of my retina in a font I don’t recognize?
Will I trace the shape of my expiration calling to the stand my eye—the last living witness to my stage exit—and enter it in humanity’s record?
The hands of a government man?
The twist of a societal knife?
Will my last vision be of a crime? Punishment? Both?
I drop the key in the box. Consciousness room vacated. You may begin the sweep.
I spy with my last dying eye, something beginning with cuneiform.
What if my eye is closed—does the camera of this orb still work? Will the button be pressed regardless? Will I go out of focus in this moment?
The last thing I see, when my eyes are closed, what will it be? The imprint of the back of my eyelid, black and swirling, sucking into a void as the last vestige of viable life is strangled from that last fighting cell. Vision of my yet-to-be-diagnosed disease winning, perhaps? Old age or cancer or dementia. What will dementia look like on the fleshy projector on the inside of my eyelid?
Eyes open.
Will it be the grain of a floorboard, ancient lifelines imprisoned by the clear coat varnish of time? Will it be the dirt on the floor of my heart attack? I should clean under the fridge more often. Please don’t photograph that, eye. Do dying eyes judge? Are dying eyes studio portrait takers or wartime photojournalists?
The truth of the last thing I see.
Will it be the battle of dust bunnies under a Westinghouse Frost Free, advancing swiftly into the swirl of my eye, mixing the oil of frenzy into the pooled flecks of blue and green and glittered silvers and golds. Iris opens. Iris closes. The lid stays in the picture.
So that’s where that went.
Pupils, students of my lifetime’s ambition—both will go dark.
Will I be alone?
Will I be with someone?
Will I be home or away?
Will the aperture be wide open or slowly closing?
Will the last thing I see be the ceiling of a hospital room?
The face of a doctor or a paramedic or a startled passerby?
Will it be of the city?
Will it be the woods?
Will it be the violence of a man?
Or the love of one?
Will it be in a supermarket produce section, pondering a plum?
Will the light be natural?
Will this last thing be mundane?
Murderous?
Mellow?
Will the last thing I see be a plate of Jello?
Will it be red? I hope so. No one chooses green. Do they? Will I?
Will it be ugly, the last thing that I see? Will the wet plate of my eye capture the immature violence of a world that throws us up against brick walls and shakes us down for our sanity?
Will the last thing I see be the triumphant swell of a society on the brink of taking back, or the soulful moan of a world giving up?
Will I make a sound?
DO THE EARS RECORD OUR LAST SOUND?!
Will the last thing I see be someone I know?
Will it…. Will it be you?
The science of the last thing you see—if you prefer to call it science instead of the whimsy it is—is a made-up thing. Optography. Studied for a hot minute and debunked just as quickly, the hope of this science was the ability to extract the identity of the killer from the victim’s eye. Does the eye capture the last thing you see at your moment of death? Can the resulting “optograph” be used as a witness in court to prove the malice of a murderer?
Can my eye capture the last throes of my story? The final lines of this tome? Will it capture the last full stop of my heart as I close the book on me? Recorded. Timestamped. Filed away.
Where exactly? For what purpose? To what end?
Who would store these images? Where is the library? Who is the librarian? Who reviews and catalogues the last image of the last thing that every last human being ever last saw?
The answer is no one.
Trust me on this.
In pondering this question, I now offer you this moment of clarity. Of vision. Fix it in your mind.
I spy with my living eye something beginning with now.
First and lasts are not important, for dying eyes are living eyes.
The last image. The first image. Both are become the now image.
Look.
My daguerreotype is clear. My clarity is fixed.
Love.
That’s last thing you will see.
If the last thing you see be me.
Watch the Video about the themes in this post 👇
This week’s amends…
“Stay in vibration of life force. Meditate on rocks-trees. Now. No future. Now. …Stay open. Now. No future. Nothing but absolute reality.”– Garry Shandling, final diary entry, February 24, 2016. From “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling.”
On Rotation: “Racing in the Street” a cover of Springsteen by Serena Ryder.
Via Eric Maiserson’s Fav 5
I have been slowly adding the covers I like to a playlist. This one.
And a reminder that all songs I’ve ever featured in this newsletter are added to the giant mega super playlist of magnificents and magnificence which you can access with the easy depress on this button. 👇
Wheelie Yellow. I love this. I’d been seeing this little RC van in some reels and finally took the time to go look at the YT channel after being reminded of it via a Santa Cruz bicycles email, of all things.
And who doesn’t love a good van build video!?
If you like balloon popping videos, you’ll love this.
Via Kottke
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple