More a story outline than a story...
I watched him walk out to the edge of the roof and jump. I'd never seen anyone attempt suicide before. I'd never seen anyone trust their fate to chance so completely. His disinterest in his own safety was truly astonishing. I couldn't believe it.
And yet, the shock with which I greeted the sight of his jump was as nothing, when I got to the ground, via the elevator and two swinging doors, to the sight of him standing and dusting himself off as if nothing extraordinary had happened. I stared at him; I was transfixed by the ease with which he accepted his miraculous safety. I said, "How did you survive?" And he said, "What do you mean? Of course I survived, I don't know how to die."
And he truly didn't. He couldn't figure it out. Over the next several days I watched him cheat death in a thousand different ways. He had no idea how death could work, and therefore, like Elmer Fudd, running through the atmosphere, he couldn't be killed.
Oh, he hurt himself a few times. He knew how to hurt himself and he wasn't invincible. He was capable of feeling pain and he was pretty banged up, pretty regularly. But the most banged up he ever was wasn't in line with the amount of dead he ought to have been after his daily brushes with the infinite.
He leapt off buildings, he dove in front of cars, and he drove off bridge embankments. He stabbed himself with knives, he hung himself from railings, and he inhaled poisons and carcinogens as if there were no studies saying anything. He acted as if death was just something that happened to other people, and for the longest time, he was right.
"You've never experienced anything that is at once so exciting and so empty." He said, "For the moments I am falling I feel exhilarated, I feel as if the sky is opening up to swallow me. But in the end I know that I will land, safely, with a skinned knee or a broken leg. I know that there is no death for me, because I don't know how death could work. It is a mystery to me. I've always wanted to see what happens next. I have a storyteller's desire to see what comes after this. I seek the moment after life, the moment when the door to the undiscovered country is opened to me."
His charisma was undeniable and he developed a following. He would stand, shirt off, muscles gleaming, at the top of a cliff. His people would stand at the bottom and watch as he spread his arms in the sun. His outstretched hands seemed to grasp for all the world offered and then, as I stood by, chronicling his motions, he would step forward to the air and fall.
His extreme sports take on the final solution was not his only form of pursuit. He injected himself with diseased needles. He wandered among the virulent and pursued the venereally unfortunate. As his chronicler I was privy to all of his deviancies and repulsive submissiveness. He was beatific in his acceptance of his fate. He ate and drank the refuse of humanity in a continual attempt to end his own existence. I have never seen a man desire death so fully and yet be so cheerful about life.
"There is nothing that is not existentially exciting, if only for a time." He said, " I wake up and embrace the day as I embrace a lover. And as a lover is always bringing new joy, so does the day. And as a lover brings climax in coitus, so death is the desire of my days. Death is the climax I seek. Death is the meal I hunger after. Death is the lesson I desire above all learning. I scorn all things that are not death, and I accept all things as the means to death. Life and death are conjoined and each is the ultimate expression of the other."
He was brought to trial for his followers over-zealous desire to emulate his self-destructive lifestyle. There was an enormous outcry against him as the public deaths of his followers became more and more numerous. But, as he said at his trial, holding a man responsible for the actions of others can never be legally sound. A man can only be responsible for his own actions, and without a successfully proven attempted suicide there was no case against him. His actions could not be construed as suicidal, because he had proven himself incapable of death.
"So this is how you do it." He said.
Those were his final words. "So this is how you do it." He said them with a smile and then he was gone. It was a moment that should have had all the best Hollywood lighting, and all the best people of the world standing around. And yet, it was squalid and empty. He died in a bed, in a dingy room. He died from the simplest thing that you can imagine. He died by asking.
I was with him when he found the book, and I was with him when he decided to call on the Ending of Men personified. I sat with him while he performed the ceremonies and the rites of calling. I watched him slice his wrists and tie the tourniquets to bind the flow. I re-lit one of the candles after he passed it too quickly and it went out. I couldn't see what he saw when it came, but I heard him ask for the Knowledge of the End. I heard him call it Father and I saw the blood flow stop. But I couldn't see what he saw and I don't know how he felt as his chapter ended. I only know that he learned the lesson he sought.
"So this is how you do it."
I watched him walk out to the edge of the roof and jump. I'd never seen anyone attempt suicide before. I'd never seen anyone trust their fate to chance so completely. His disinterest in his own safety was truly astonishing. I couldn't believe it.
And yet, the shock with which I greeted the sight of his jump was as nothing, when I got to the ground, via the elevator and two swinging doors, to the sight of him standing and dusting himself off as if nothing extraordinary had happened. I stared at him; I was transfixed by the ease with which he accepted his miraculous safety. I said, "How did you survive?" And he said, "What do you mean? Of course I survived, I don't know how to die."
And he truly didn't. He couldn't figure it out. Over the next several days I watched him cheat death in a thousand different ways. He had no idea how death could work, and therefore, like Elmer Fudd, running through the atmosphere, he couldn't be killed.
Oh, he hurt himself a few times. He knew how to hurt himself and he wasn't invincible. He was capable of feeling pain and he was pretty banged up, pretty regularly. But the most banged up he ever was wasn't in line with the amount of dead he ought to have been after his daily brushes with the infinite.
He leapt off buildings, he dove in front of cars, and he drove off bridge embankments. He stabbed himself with knives, he hung himself from railings, and he inhaled poisons and carcinogens as if there were no studies saying anything. He acted as if death was just something that happened to other people, and for the longest time, he was right.
"You've never experienced anything that is at once so exciting and so empty." He said, "For the moments I am falling I feel exhilarated, I feel as if the sky is opening up to swallow me. But in the end I know that I will land, safely, with a skinned knee or a broken leg. I know that there is no death for me, because I don't know how death could work. It is a mystery to me. I've always wanted to see what happens next. I have a storyteller's desire to see what comes after this. I seek the moment after life, the moment when the door to the undiscovered country is opened to me."
His charisma was undeniable and he developed a following. He would stand, shirt off, muscles gleaming, at the top of a cliff. His people would stand at the bottom and watch as he spread his arms in the sun. His outstretched hands seemed to grasp for all the world offered and then, as I stood by, chronicling his motions, he would step forward to the air and fall.
His extreme sports take on the final solution was not his only form of pursuit. He injected himself with diseased needles. He wandered among the virulent and pursued the venereally unfortunate. As his chronicler I was privy to all of his deviancies and repulsive submissiveness. He was beatific in his acceptance of his fate. He ate and drank the refuse of humanity in a continual attempt to end his own existence. I have never seen a man desire death so fully and yet be so cheerful about life.
"There is nothing that is not existentially exciting, if only for a time." He said, " I wake up and embrace the day as I embrace a lover. And as a lover is always bringing new joy, so does the day. And as a lover brings climax in coitus, so death is the desire of my days. Death is the climax I seek. Death is the meal I hunger after. Death is the lesson I desire above all learning. I scorn all things that are not death, and I accept all things as the means to death. Life and death are conjoined and each is the ultimate expression of the other."
He was brought to trial for his followers over-zealous desire to emulate his self-destructive lifestyle. There was an enormous outcry against him as the public deaths of his followers became more and more numerous. But, as he said at his trial, holding a man responsible for the actions of others can never be legally sound. A man can only be responsible for his own actions, and without a successfully proven attempted suicide there was no case against him. His actions could not be construed as suicidal, because he had proven himself incapable of death.
"So this is how you do it." He said.
Those were his final words. "So this is how you do it." He said them with a smile and then he was gone. It was a moment that should have had all the best Hollywood lighting, and all the best people of the world standing around. And yet, it was squalid and empty. He died in a bed, in a dingy room. He died from the simplest thing that you can imagine. He died by asking.
I was with him when he found the book, and I was with him when he decided to call on the Ending of Men personified. I sat with him while he performed the ceremonies and the rites of calling. I watched him slice his wrists and tie the tourniquets to bind the flow. I re-lit one of the candles after he passed it too quickly and it went out. I couldn't see what he saw when it came, but I heard him ask for the Knowledge of the End. I heard him call it Father and I saw the blood flow stop. But I couldn't see what he saw and I don't know how he felt as his chapter ended. I only know that he learned the lesson he sought.
"So this is how you do it."
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
lorelei:
enjoy the show? 
user092840:
Happy Birthday!!! 