when we were laughing in the bitter face of death

this was kind of a free association/stream of consciousness thing i wrote a little while ago.
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Death was in the air and we were laughing. Can you believe that? Laughing! But it’s okay because you see we’re on this train and as far as I can tell it’s not going anywhere so I turn to Palomino and ask him what time it is and he leans over and sticks his wrist in my face, showing me his watch. It had no hands and was filled with sand and said TIME IS NOW and I called it his Zen watch but right now I wanted the time, not now. Now I have. Now I will always have. But what I always seem to lack is time; the ruin of seconds past; I see the trail I’ve left behind me but I can only look back if I’m moving forward, no? So I ask him again, “What time is it?” and again he shows me “TIME IS NOW” which got me wondering, if now is now what is the past but a pre-now?
What is then but post-now? So then I realized life is a three-stage process: pre-now, now, post-now. And I felt heavy and insightful and figured that everything really turns in to everything, so I thought about Lila and when she left and I realized that my now was here and she was just a fossil, a fermented, hung and dried pre-now. And I thought about how Pal and I, we’re so young and death seems so daunting: we’ve got so much shit left to do! And I said to myself death is just post-now meaning it is not yet come and that, hey, we’re still breathing and laughing, right? So when I asked Palomino what time is it? and he presented me with TIME IS NOW he was really just saying this is what it is – there is no ruin in the present. Lila was gone already and death was lingering somewhere off in the apocalyptic distance and now…now I guess it’s time to let as many nows pass, putting an immeasurable amount of distance between here and where I came from.
So when Pal turned to me and said “Time to get off the train,” I though “Now” and stepped off onto the platform, crossed the street, and was met full-on by a Dodge mini-van bursting with family, and the last word I remember saying before I met death was “Now” because really, nothing, neither the ruin of love nor the beauty of laughter nor the full impact of death can come at any other time but Now. And hey, it even hurt a little.