It’s 2:30 in the morning and I’m drinking a cup of instant coffee, eating baby carrots and spicy humus and just finished reading a story in a book about a place where people who have committed suicide now live–a place with apartments, stores, bars, parks and all that.

I had to take a break and write this down so I could see if it makes sense, that there would be a parallel world where dead people live even though they’re dead, where they drink coffee and visit friends (who also had killed themselves) and even the parents of the people who killed themselves. In the story, it’s not clear whether the parents also killed themselves or whether they just wanted to be close to their children, in a place where no one ages beyond the time that death surprised them by their own hands.

The great debate over whether there is an afterlife doesn’t include a place where suicides go on to live in a place like this. But why not? Does it make any less sense than the notion that there’s a place where all the dead go? Why die if it’s only to go on living? Why not just go on living without dying?

I think that when you die, you’re just dead. The brain impulses that comprise your memories and thoughts and drive what your muscles do may sail off to some cloud where they await new brain circuits to invade, but that’s about it. And maybe the dreams that the living have when they’re asleep are really some of those impulses trying out available spaces in other peoples’ brains – those who have vacant loops where memories haven’t yet been stored?

And now it’s 3:00 in the morning and I’m wondering if there are untethered bits left over from long gone gray matter trying to enter my head to throw me off course? I’ve finished the carrots and have orange-colored pieces stuck between my teeth. My tongue tries to push them loose, but they’re in too tight. This obsession with the orange-colored pieces now fills my mind, and thoughts of the afterlife are gone.

It has become difficult to keep one train of thought going for very long. Other trains need the same tracks and seem to be pushing mine toward a siding where passengers can disembark and maybe buy some food or tchotchkes from the locals while waiting to re-board and get on with their trip.

Maybe that thought came from a dead person’s traveling mind waves.

Or maybe my train is heading to the place where the suicides have gone to live.