No one dies on my watch. One life is perhaps saved. Had it been another ambulance, or another crew, things would have unfolded in much the same way. There were no heroics and no heroes. Everything just worked the way it should for a person who needed help.

I like being a member of the ambulance crew. I savor the feeling of belonging there. I've seldom wanted to care about being a part of a group, often actively resisting others' influence in ways both amusing and destructive. But I'm proud of the way I'm beginning to fit in to this place.

I had a long Internet-based conversation last night with my friend Doug in Maine. We chatted about getting off our asses and starting our online magazine about death. We'd been talking about doing this for months, but other shit and shenanigans got in the way. As I was driving up to the squad a couple days ago, I realized that I'm not going to be any less busy in the foreseeable future than I am now. If I want to start the magazine, now is as good a time as any. Oddly enough, Doug confessed to having the same epiphany at roughly the same time. The zine will be called Omline.

What we foresee is an offbeat, serious/humorous glimpse into the collective mystery of the human condition: dying. Although it is the inevitable final achievement of every life, death is a topic that makes many people extremely uncomfortable. Americans see multiple deaths on television and in movies, yet we still struggle to say the right thing to someone whose child or partner has died. We're desperately unequipped to harvest the insight that comes from discovering the absolute truth of our own mortality. What we hope the zine will do is prompt that kind of thought by engaging readers with a quirky blend of irreverence and insight. I did a first draft of the front page of the zine, and Doug is now revising it.

We're often most intrigued by the things that frighten us. We feel compelled to get closer to them for a better look, but fear getting too close. What I'd like to do is bring everyone who reads the zine about two steps closer to the many faces and ways of dying. Uncomfortable at times, but fascinating and always real. My dream is to work with a person who is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, having them create a journal like this one to document their life and experiences. I would like the column to transcend the voyeuristic/self-indulgent nature of online journalism and become a way for people to connect, both with each other and with their own awareness of mortality.

All that's in the future. In the short term, we have relatively humble aspirations for a monthly issue with items penned by each of us, along with a guest-authored feature. The feature will be an unpredictable contributor's column, a sharp spotlight illuminating something arresting and important. If you want to pitch an idea, go for it. Death in other cultures. A Goth's take on death. Photographic essays. Close calls. An interview with a grave digger. Whatever. Just walk past the standard cultural vision, a little past the comfort zone, somewhere into uncertain territory.

Of course, all of this traces to that day in June last year when I saw a woman have a seizure. I was walking along 18th Street in Adams Morgan when I saw her suddenly pitch forward into the street only a few feet away from me. I immediately dropped my briefcase and did what I could to protect her head and spine while the seizure passed, asking one bystander to direct traffic around us and another to call 911. I couldn't do much for her, but I probably would have been too scared to jump in and do anything if I hadn't have been an EMT several years ago. It had a familiar feeling, almost comfortable.

There I was, crouched on the street cradling this woman's bleeding head as she began to emerge from the fog of the seizure. The moment had such an intensity and clarity that it crystallized my life around me and rendered it momentarily translucent. I saw through what had formerly been impenetrable walls in my perceptions and expectations.

I saw that what I held in my hands, the fragile and astonishing enigma of human life, was more important than anything I was doing at my office. I was cut off from what was essential, and desperate to get back to it. I first conceived of the zine shortly after that, as a means to reconnect with a crucial underlying truth about life and death. A year later, the zine is just coming together, but I have quit my job, founded a more sane and creative business, and started running on an ambulance again. On that day on 18th Street I was glad I could do something for someone in a moment of need, but I couldn't fathom what was being given to me in those few minutes. If the woman remembers me at all, it's as a smudge on the edge of a bad dream. She has no idea how much changed when she fell into the street.

Whomever and wherever you are, thanks for everything.