An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

by Ambrose Bierce

Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp.

They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived.

What a coincidence, this passage, after reading Huxley's Heaven and Hell. He applies the word preternatural often in the context of altered experiences, under the influence of mescalin, acid, or ascetic fasting, and dread. The same observation of the sharpening of senses comes up here. Note: i picked up this book, referred by Leonard Shlain's Art and Physics, from the Literary chapter, on how writers like Dostoyevsky applied a stretching of time, a slow motion in prose.

eddies of the stream,