Yes, I realize that I'm going to die. Since at fifty-two my hair hasn't grayed (my beard has and I dye it) and my body still works perfectly unobtrusively, I confess I'm laboring under the delusion that I'm somehow an Immune and Immortal Thing--a permanent youth and a good nouny one at that. Give me a year or two and I'll reluctantly catch up. My mom died of cancer an un-dyed brunette at fifty-nine, startled that she wasn't exempt.

If it continues, science's trend toward showing things to be processes will go a long way toward explaining death, though not in a way that will seem delightful at first. When they end, processes are gone in a way that nouns as we've imagined them are not.

But the hardnosed practical ones among us will get used to it, and it's not so bad being a process reliably masquerading as a thing for a while. Besides, our processes include the delusional ones whereby even the hardnosed can content themselves with delusions of permanence. Within reason. Permanent while it lasts.

Maybe even the democratic process. For a while it was looking like the nounists had cast a permanent spell that would end it. Maybe not.