Actions in Space
I'm barely alive enough to tell you what I think; how I feel; what I want. I can't keep going on like this, and yet I can't just stay where I am either. How can I save myself from myself; eternally struggling and conditioned to cope. But what of a solution? Where am I throughout all the wars I wage inside me. Do I have any opinions? I don't care to. But the world screams at me: YOU MUST EXIST! How come? Why can't I stay on the perimeter in reflection and solitude? Why must I be a part of something so confusing? Is it because society is the genome of ME, and so, take part I do, in spite of disinterest. What shall I do? I have no one to put this question toward. No one knows what to do. I'm not hopeful and that's not tragic. Tragedy is the way I live. I watch Netflix all evening after getting home from a job which pays for my attention. So to what do I still have energy to attend to when there's no insensitive? I sip on escape techniques called booze and I tranquilize myself with plants. The dishes pile, the laundry ranks, and my dogs don't get to go outside again because... I'm the problem. I'm sad and tired and keep it all buried deep under bed sheets and exaggerated portion sizes of food. Call it depression, anxiety, fear, weakness, selfishness, none of the above, or an amalgamation of it all. I feel full all the time, and I can't find a space empty enough to unburden my sorrow. No one wants to hear me cry. My whaling reminds them of reality. I wont let them listen anyway. I'm slipping wildly through the void of Life like everyone else, and I don't know what to do about it.
"There's death for a life time, and then there's death within a moment. Do you know the difference?" I said to her.
She walked closer to the edge of the cliff while my words seemed to lasso her mind enough to keep from moving forward. Before she left her mark on the crashing waters below, she stood with five toes hanging off the side. She was barefoot, with a pair of ripped jean shorts on and a white tank top.
"Please go," She said. She was angry at me for being there. I could tell in her grumbled voice, she was not hoping anyone was coming to save her. Especially not a stranger. She re-positioned her foot and a few small rocks were kicked off the edge. They disappeared into the crashing waterfall and she was concentrated on something; what led her there, how much it might hurt, if she really wanted to commit to this act, I don't know.
"What's your name?" I asked as I walked very slowly toward her. She didn't respond, or even turn around. She stood very still with her head tilted down. Maybe she was praying. "My name is James. I came out here to hike. I don't have my phone so I can't call for help. What if we just took a few steps back and talked a while?" Even though I was out hiking, I didn't know if it was wise to tell her the whole truth. That had I gotten out of my house ten minutes earlier I'd be the one at the edge of the cliff, she'd have been the one following behind.
"Nothing left to talk about," She sniffed harshly and I realized she had been crying. "This world doesn't make sense. How can you live like this?" She said angrily. Her shoulders began to bob as she teared more intensely. She still wouldn't turn around. Something about not being able to see her face made the whole moment surreal. She was no one and anyone. A neighbor, a niece, a friend, a mother.
Her words ran through my mind. When she spoke them an electric chill ran over me. "I- I don't know." I struggled to find silver linings since I had not been able to come up with any to begin with. "We can talk about it together though, if you just come away from the edge with me." She wouldn't budge, and I wasn't close enough yet to grab her. I wasn't sure if I had any right to grab her.
"No one understands," she groaned. Then she lifted her foot off the edge and with minimal forward motion, let gravity pull her out into the open air.
It happened so quickly. I didn't shout or scream. I stood helpless and only mildly shocked that she really jumped. Some think that you must journey a thousand miles and study at ancient temples in order to have any sort of profound insight. But I stand to correct this legend as insight struck the moment that woman left me alone on that cliff. I was profoundly taken by what I was now seeing very clearly. Not only did I realize that we shared a sorrow that was not hers or mine but rather that of humanity. I also noticed that death of the body is not the only total ending or death there is. At the moment that I do not record everything that happens to me in Life, but only the things that matter, that is the same moment wherein I am able to Live freely without the ball and chain of history and trauma. I had no system; no how, but the fact was made clear. Death for a Life time is the death of the body. Death within a moment speaks of ones capacity to die to things that don't matter in order to live free of the past.
My mind felt strangely energized while distraught by the formerly tormented stranger. As if I had accidentally inhaled a drug of some sort, I felt like my brain was summersalting and activating all types of neuronal connections. The death of the individual was nothing new, as there are many stories of ego deaths induced one way or another. But to suggest that this death can occur without effort, and purely through the observation of something impeccably factual, was new to me. The feeling I road while hiking that mountain was snatched out of me through this insight. And so came the next question I had to contemplate. Is suicide a misguided attempt at getting rid of the individual; the ego? With all the baggage ascribed to an idea of self, could suicide be a complete misunderstanding of oneself in relationship to death? This all seemed so apparently the case, yet to put this into words seemed to take away from its profundity somehow. Like trying to explain this insight with words, took away from the insight itself.
The woman's last words rang in my head. "No one understands." Do we understand anything? Are people to quick to suggest understanding of things which need much slower and deeper inquiry? This moment, this everlasting ending of a moment left me with questions.
Someone must have found the woman's body while I made my way back down. Ambulances and a few other hikers stood around. I told the EMT staff what I knew and they recorded my information in case of further questioning.
I walked up the mountain a fearful man, angry with the world and it's gloom. I desended the mountain as nobody, without a scent of what drove me mad before. It simply made no sense to be miserable, the feeling didn't even cross me. My only regret was that I had not understood this fact sooner. Or what is worse, that this understanding is not much more deeply universal. I imagined a world where to die every day; every second, was common place. The connection between this distinction of death and the radicalization of freedom became so apparent. I had no flag to die for, no religion to kill for, no label to swear by. With no obligation to these identifiers, being nobody was what it meant to be free. The man who walked up that hill was a somebody, burdened and beaten by the world, misguided in his attempt to free himself, he, like that woman made a relationship between living and dying. But this relationship was made without noticing the fabrication of James. The whole image of James. James the concept. James the idea. Washed away like the stranger in the river, James died that day. All that was left was the individual: to be whole in oneself.