To kill myself or enjoy the mountains.
Simple story of realization, quick single draft write up for free time.
A lot of credit goes to the philosopher Camus, and literary god Thomas Wolfe.
As a side note, a lot of people get overcome with these emotions, be cool and hear them out. Sometimes we miss the beauty and get whomped by the “ceaseless hammering” of life.
Its based on a story I heard about a man who goes to kill himself in the sierras, but has a change of heart at the last second. Figured I’d write about it.
The snow gave out and I sunk into it, the white powder rising up above my knee as I caught myself. I didn’t think of snow shoes on my way here, I only thought of the day ahead. Without a pack it was relatively easy to pull myself out of the hole, and through the softening snow. My next steps became measured, weight slowly shifting to each foot, today I wasn’t racing a clock, the sun, or anyone else; my one way ticket into the wilderness needn’t be as difficult as the march to this moment.
I thought of my father, and his father before him; the slog through absurdity and hypocrisy; they stepped with confidence and ease, the floor giving out whenever it pleased—whenever they trusted, gave, or sacrificed to much. I thought of my own steps, my own desires, and the utter silence of an unreasonable world. My step gave out again, and I fell forward.
My thoughts drifted to Hazmine, she would only ask me to wait, whispering “manana” in quiet consideration. Others would say: “Later on”, “when you’re older”, “after you’ve worked long enough”, “once you pay it forward”, the talk was irrelevant to the sadness. I picked myself up from the snow, brushing it off as it melted into my wool coat. These were the things I whispered to myself in my youth, and the false prophet of time continued to be the mantra into my middle age; the only thing it offered me was the slow death—it being the only certainty in waiting until “manana”.
But Manana had come and went, and time offered only the relentless hammering of the day to day. I had become robotic and insignificant. The greatness promised when I was young had been gilded away with my youth, the desire for a future ripped away by the repetitive blows of life’s truncheon. The value of family and society’s materialistic wants disappeared like seconds on a clock. The implacable need for more drove me forward, but once you acknowledge that the thirst is forever, it loses its hold. Why go on?
To my right, the sierras opened up before me. Snow capped peaks, massive granite walls, an entire world of desolation before me. This is what the world was, and is, forever in this moment a representation of how it should have been—lonely and quiet, the only sound is that of the wind cutting through the low valleys and over the sharp ridges. Right here would be fine; the back drop would be dramatic enough for my own liking and far enough away from the eyes and judgement of my fellows. I approached the ledge.
A final moment would resolve all of it, no longer would I arm my thoughts against myself, no longer would I repeat arguments that never occurred in the first place, I wouldn’t want or need for anything. And then I looked forward, and was embraced by the world before me. Did I stop from cowardice? Another excuse to halt my progress, and prevent the inevitable; or was it a spark that ignited a fire against an insurmountable winter?
I found myself on my knees, looking out over the glory of the scene before me, overtaken by a fit of awe; this mountain sound, the virgin peaks, and the blanket of blue sky overhead. My heart beat and the small flame of my significance seemed to grow against the indomitable darkness that had recently overcome it. I had come so far, and traveled for so many hours to come to this point, to go off silently into the wilderness alone— my soul naked and bare as I was born. A shiver began to creep into me, as the snow soaked and chilled skin, but I felt awakened in my heart. I took in a deep cold breath and wept there. A breeze came through the mountain peaks, nipping at sweat covered face and a wet hoodie, but something stood unshaken from father winters final gasps before the incoming summer.
I was caught in this moment of finality, to march forward over the edge, or to buckle on the mantle of absurdity, retreating from an end that offered the respite of peace from the lump in my throat. My mother used to tell me that “however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for”, and as I looked out into the wild of California, I felt thankful in my heart for this moment earned by sweat, and sadness.
At that moment one would have found it hard to do anything other than laugh, at my foolishness and insecurities and idiotic sentiments, and all the things that society had poisoned me with. Face to face with the culmination of the irrational, there was a sudden frame of happiness, standing on the edge of the world I came to a final confrontation with a silent and unreasonable world. The journey’s reward lost its value in the presence of the vastness, replaced by the silent appreciation of the honest unchanging nature of the wilderness.
To my surprise I found myself in time, being owned by it, for we all have to travel through it to our end. My mind was no longer silent before a motionless mirror, reflecting back all of my childhood joy and nostalgia, but instead had cracked and shattered into innumerable pieces; each offering understanding and happiness of the past—if only to be reconstructed! But reconstruction was for nothing, and would always be for nothing, for we can never return back to the heart and love of the past. I stopped wanting the calm surface of the mirror, the peace that if offered, and the love that it held.
A voice spoke to me there, “You shall die” was its warning, “you will lose your worldly view, for greater views; the lovers and friends you hold dear, for greater loving; the home you have, for a better home, and so you will lose all of your life, as you know it, for a grandeur life.” The wounds and scars of the past seemed insignificant to this promise, and so I stared out over the vastness of the world and all of its unchanging love.
We can never return back to the home we knew, to the life and the hours of hot blooded youth and love, we are the spark of a fire, the mind, the heart, and the soul—our time coming and going like the wings of a fly relative to the time of the universe. We are worth of a penny of Iron, and a pound of salt.
Nothing is going to give me back what I had wanted, the brother I lost, the world I wanted as a child. But “manana” is a blank page, its mine to write and mine to make. While everything within me ought to reject tomorrow, I can long for it, negating it to my premises. At the very least, I knew my life would be small and extinguished, the darkness being infinite and everlasting. But I could die with defiance on the lips, and a final shout of denial that would ring the pulsing of my very heart within the jaws of an all-enduring night.
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