Mark Twain quote

Quote from Don

There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.

There's definitely lots of good stuff in Mark Twain! His "Connecticut Yankee" will always be one of my favorite books, largely for its can-do and anti-religious content. But here is he saying that he was "alive" during that hundred million years? ("presence of a deep ...satisfaction?")

Like I said I am a great fan of Mark Twain, but as I look back again I read that section as even more off the mark:

....and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes

You don't read that as implying both (1) some kind of awareness and contentedness while being dead, and (2) the desire to resume that experience (of death) later when he dies?

While it's clear that Epicurus doesn't hold there to be any pain in death, nor is there any kind of pleasure whatsoever in death, and death is not a thing to be welcomed, except when one faces pain for which there is no other remedy.

Do you see that differently?

I agree that there is some echoing of taking a devil-may-care attitude toward death that is consistent with Epicurus, but doesn't this cross a line and imply or in fact flatly express that death should flatly be viewed as a desirable experience?

"....when the opportunity comes"?