We recently rented a documentary about renowned sci-fi author and drugged-out wacko Phillip K. Dick. It was sort of a whim; at the snobby art film video store in our neighborhood, you try to rent something like that as intellectual validation whenever you’re also getting anything vaguely mainstream. Once, in the grips of desperately grumpy moods and in need of mindless entertainment, we rented “Moonstruck” and “My Cousin Vinny,” but thought better of it before we reached the counter and threw in Fritz Lang’s “M” to avoid being utterly discredited in the eyes of management. Three days later we returned the tapes. The person behind the desk only vaguely suppressed his physical disgust at our first two choices. “At least ‘M’ is worth watching,” he said, whereupon we nodded and fled without admitting that we’d really meant to get to “M” but you know how it is…

But we love the video store because it’s an island of personality in an age where video stores might as well be automated dispensers. People who work there have opinions about the visual medium of film, which is to say they actually care about it. Once we overheard a heated discussion between two people at the desk about director Steven Spielberg. “He’s just manipulating you through sound and visuals,” one snarled derisively. We burst out laughing – which director doesn’t do this, exactly? – and never quite felt so intimidated by them again.

When we rented the Dick documentary we were probably on fairly safe ground, video-wise; our other choice was “No Such Thing,” an odd little film in which Sara Polley (perhaps best known for ”Go”) goes to a Nova Scotian fishing village to confront the self-pitying alcoholic monster (an immortal beast with horns and bad skin) that dispatched her onetime boyfriend. So we were stretching our savvy movie aficionado karma a bit.

The documentary showed signs of being a genuine labor of love, meaning that its intentions far outstripped its technical abilities. One imagined, over and over, an impassioned Phillip K. Dick fan toting his video camera around, wearing down other science fiction authors and Dick’s friends with repeated requests for interviews until they reluctantly acquiesced to sit down with him. We hung with it until the end, because I’ve had a soft spot for Dick's stories since I read “Eye in the Sky,” a seriously demented tale of people forced to live inside each other’s conceptions of reality, at the impressionable pre-drug experimentational age of ten. Also, and I’m completely aware of how insufferable this sounds, I’m beginning to draw up plans for my next book, and there’s a wee bit of Dick in the mix.

Near the end, the film yielded up its best gem. One writer tells the story of another author he knew who carried a small cyanide capsule around with him for many years. When asked to explain, he would pull out the pill and hold it reverently before his eyes. “A prison becomes a home when you have the key,” he would say.

I’ve been loving that line lately, because I’ve been working on a mix CD for my funeral. Although I have no intentions of exiting this mortal coil any time soon, making preparations just in case is an enormously satisfying reconciliation with mortality.

The way I see it, these are my three most likely scenarios for an early exit: 1) car accident, 2) line-of-duty death, and 3) terminal illness. If granted my preference, I’d opt for number two. It carries with it the uncomfortable possibility of burning to death, but it has a certain thematic value that I think those who survive me would appreciate.

In the first scenario, there probably wouldn’t be time to consider my pending demise. In the case of an illness, there may be weeks or months (accompanied, irritatingly, by the constant implied presence of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross) to go through the appropriate stages. But if faced with a very, very bad situation on the rescue squad -- say, being trapped in a fire where there is absolutely no hope of survival -- there may be just enough time to get really scared and not enough to achieve a calm acceptance of my fate. That’s why I think it’s important to do some of the groundwork now.

I really gave this some thought. It sounds ridiculous and morbid, but I genuinely don’t want my last precious moments to be muddled with panic and fear. I’ve expended a lot of effort to insure that I don’t live with fear marking the edges of my life, and I don’t want to cap it off with anything less. Oddly the answer came to me while I was riding the Metro up to the rescue squad one afternoon, swaying slowly with the other strangers in the train car, heading for our own invisible destinations.

I decided that when faced with my own certain death in a bad on-the-job situation I would first consider that everyone who knows me would know I died doing what I loved. That’s not bad. Paired with this thought would be the realization that everyone will remember me as young and beautiful, or at least young. Finally, I thought, I’d just hum some heroic sounding music, something that always makes me feel good, like “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennae to Heaven” by Godspeed You Black Emperor. I think that’s about all it would take. Sounds stupid, but if it lets me die more or less the way I’d want to, I’ll take it. I’ll die anyway someday; I do want it to be halfway decent.

About then it occurred to me that it was time to fulfill my long-held ambition to create a mix CD for my funeral reception. This wouldn’t just be the music by which I expected my loved ones to get drunk and tell lies about me; this compilation would serve a more important purpose. It would be designed to serve as a partial soundtrack for the survivors (Susan, most notably) in the months after my exit, to help with the grieving and getting-over. Naturally, this makese the choice of tunes critical; they have to spin some of my faves, but feature music that captured nice times between us, as well as some pieces that help move the ambient mood from sorrow to remembrance to new joy in the span of 12 or so songs.

And of course I couldn’t just put together the mix without spending suitable time on the cover art – I mean, it’s the little things that matter afterwards, isn’t it? My CD is almost complete – just in need of one or two finishing touches. Obviously I’m a little concerned I might kick off before I can finish it. The funny part is that it’s fast becoming my favorite music collection. I want to listen to it all the time, which seems somehow wrong. And I want to burn it and give it all my friends for Christmas, which seems like a cheapening pre-deployment of my death, a shabby exploitation. So I load the current song list onto my MP3 player and listen through headphones as I ride the Metro up to the squad, smiling privately at the softly swaying passengers with whom fate has decreed me to share my train.