On this page I live. No matter what happens to me decades, centuries, or millennia from now, I will go unchanged as long as this compressed and dried cellulose pulp that we call paper contains my written word. Many see a blank page as a mindless medium for repetitions of spoken word to force memory for testing. For me, Hemlock is not the cause of Socrates’ death—the only way to die would be to erase the manifestations of his mind from written word and memory. It is not time that kills, but the actions that destroy the thoughts. Should you subscribe to “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think, therefore I am”, then nothing can kill me unless my thoughts are destroyed. I unveil the mind of countless thinkers long “dead”—yet they still change who I am today. They make me laugh, challenge me to grow, affect what I do, and enrich my life today. And yet people say they are dead. Many who are “living” do not change me as much as the “dead” do.

It is interesting how the preserved thought through a medium as simple as paper and ink can transcend death’s sting of finality. In what seems a typical, normal way, the sustained word on paper is a portal to the ethereal. It can transcend time, culture, generations, and the mind will stay intact and express as long as the medium lasts. I think of the past where friends and family have passed away; yet are they truly “gone” if their words reside inside my mind—challenging and changing me on a daily basis? If they still affect the present and spur new thoughts in me, I can not consider it death should they still communicate, still express. As long as my thought remains on this page, and is read from this page, I live.

--Stephen Passman