I'll admit when we first started this book I was a little skeptical when Dr. Sexson told us that this book is the closest to having "everything". I kept wondering, what did he mean by everything? Did it contain all the answers to questions one would ask themselves throughout their lives or maybe it just contained all the questions one ought to ask themselves. Also, how could it have everything in it that I was searching for? I have to imagine that everyone's everything is slightly different just as we are all leading slightly different lives down slightly different paths. Was this book a generic frame of what the path would probably look like? I had no idea but I figured the only way to find out was to simply jump right in and read. That is what I did.
It did not take long before I began to figure out what "everything" meant. Actually, it only took until page 63. Last week, the discussion of death we were having had been weighing constantly on my mind and my thoughts. Jonah's blog described how we are all enduring suicide in one way or another which I was very adverse to at first given the heavy connotations of the word. I had had a family member take his own life at around the same age I am now and to see the ripple effects that act has had on my entire family has been sobering to say the least, anyone would recoil from that thought after that experience. Yet it seemed I could not escape that word for there it was, in black ink on white paper: suicide, page 63. I read these pages with perverse fascination, it seemed so suddenly that Nicholas descended to the point of contemplating this end. I always had the assumption that the descent was more of a spiral than a straight plummet. The way he thought about his suicide, cold and calculating almost as if it were being planned by someone else and he simply accepted that this was the way it was supposed to be now. Then "the balance tipped".
What balance? What was Nicholas trying to weigh? I remember all these questions in my head as we discussed our own eventual demise in class trying to discern any other hint of a reference to the balancing act in life. Could life and sanity be so fragile as to be walking on a tight rope between what is real and is unthinkable? The way he borrowed the gun from the gatekeeper as casually as buying a piece of bread from a local store disturbed me. Did he have no thought for how the gatekeeper would feel when his gun was discovered next to this corpse? Would the gatekeeper blame himself for not seeing the signs in time and trying to stop him? Would he too plummet into a depression? All unanswerable questions but ones that warrant a reference none-the-less. Heedless, seemingly, of any other notion Nicholas set off into the woods. A place that had provided him with such relief and solitude only weeks before would now serve as his waterloo. I found it interesting that on his way to his end he chose to only mention those sights and sounds around him that would normally paint a very comforting picture in anyone else's mind. The luminous sun, the warm air, the bells from the herds of goats. Interesting. He selected his spot by comparing it to relieving one's self, a very interesting metaphor choice. It was as though this sort of thing happens everyday and, indeed, was simply a natural chore to be done. No questions, no surprises. Cold and calculating, he set about making sure his death would be achieved in the most efficient way by the optimal angle. A good death should not be done rashly after all.
I wonder what Nicholas felt when he actually rehearsed his death...
Then, it was all over. Where images of beauty and warmth could not save him, the voice of mystery and sorrow could? (wtf to that) He waited for his moment but it never came. The spontaneous singing seemed to ruin the moment. This was not a romantic death, there would be no songs or elegies created to remember this lone man in the woods with his gun....He had missed, it seems, everything.
Dr. Sexson said in one of our classes a while back that it is almost sadder for animals and babes that suffer death so soon. They, who have no knowledge nor faults yet take the ultimate burden, should be pitied above all else. I may have to disagree with this point for though their deaths are incredible tragic, it was not a death obliterate. There would be no whispered questions at their funerals..."Was it something the parents did wrong, did they not love them enough?"..."Should we have been able to see the signs to prevent this"..."How could they choose this"... The parents of a dying babe may try to blame themselves in some way but deep down they would have to know that those accusations had no ground, it was simply fate. The parents of suicide victim afford themselves no such luxury.
"Did you kill anything?"
"One shot, I missed."
.Death obliterate.
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