the Hyperion Chronicles
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#156 A Day in the Life
"Every day is the same, except this one."
-Douglas O. Massey, minutes before he died.
It's been 34 minutes, and nothing has happened yet. I'm not sure why I expected something to happen so soon. I'm just nervous, I guess. One thing's for sure, though. Today is definitely the day.
I'm not sure what I feel. I don't feel bad, exactly, but I feel bad coming; like dark clouds coming down out of the mountains. The land is dry and the air is eerily calm, but you know, inexorably, the storm is coming.
I wrote those words three years ago today. My girlfriend of almost 2 years and I had just broken up. I vowed that day never to talk about the details and I shan't here. Suffice it to say my world stopped spinning on its axis soon after. It wasn't immediately, as we still talked 4-5 times a week (more than some "together" couples), until I saw that the slow death would ultimately be worse than the quick one. Eventually I stopped reaching out and embraced the pain. You have to embrace the pain. You can run from it-for a while-but eventually it catches up to you and the impact is multiplied, not lessened.
There were actually two things that night that would reverberate in my life for months. I reached out to tell one person that night (the only one I even tried to tell for weeks). Unfortunately, he had his own problems to deal with, and I didn't make it clear why I needed him. When he didn't get back to me right away, I got offended and wrote things, and then he wrote things, then I...we didn't talk again until March.
I know there are those who would tell me a day has no specific meaning other than what we give it. Wait a minute...I think I wrote about this months ago. Maybe I can find it...
Don't tell me that numbers and days have no meaning! Don't tell me, "If we expect bad things, bad things will happen." I know that. I see it in my friend Tito every day. He makes himself more depressed in an endless cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies.
But numbers and days do have meaning, or at least they can. Take December 25. It's just another day, but every year, it becomes the fulcrum and connecting point for religion, commerce, entertainment, and family. And even if you don't personally celebrate Christmas, it's coming, and it will happen around you and to you.
How about a less abstract example?
April 20, 1999: Inspired by Neo-Nazi ideology, and God knows what else, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris pick today-originally planning to hit the 19th like McVeigh, but then choosing the 20th as the 110th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday-to unleash their vengeance on Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Armed with guns and homemade bombs, Klebold and Harris terrorize the school for hours, killing 12 students and a teacher before also killing themselves in a blood-drenched monument to their seething anger.
Don't tell me days have no meaning.
A bit melodramatic on my part, I suppose, but you get the point. There are days with extra meanings. They are all, I suppose, anniversaries...of something.
Of course, if all I had to go on was one event (and its repercussions) three years ago, I doubt I'd even remember September 22 today.
I've been trying to sleep, but I've been awake all night, and I have to get up in 28 minutes to be ready for work. I've been thinking about ________ all night. It's hard to believe it's been one year. Most of the time it seems so fresh, like I'll turn around and there she will be, smiling at me. Other times, it seems like decades have gone by, and I can barely remember her...us...I'm not sure which I fear more: that it will always hurt this deeply, or that I'll forget completely.
I can't remember the last time I looked at a girl with any interest. They warned me I'd want to go out and "prove I was a man," but that didn't happen in this case. Thursday at Buffalos playing trivia, I know that waitress was flirting with me. Koz says she likes me and I should ask her out. She's pretty enough-and more importantly, intelligent-but I have no interest in any woman, and haven't for months. I feel dead inside.
It seems macabre to rank weeks in your life by how terrible they are, but this would have to be near the top. Came home Saturday from work exhausted. Ever since the airport started back up [after September 11] there's been twice as much to do. Not actual work: the loads are incredibly light-I guess everyone's still afraid to fly-but all the extra security precautions add so much red tape to everything.
Why am I going on about this? I came home and sensed it from the moment I walked in. Something was amiss. I walked through the living room, through the connecting room to the kitchen, trying to figure out what it is. My steel-toed boots I'm still wearing from work crunch something on the hard linoleum floor. I bend down to pick it up. It feels like glass. I look up. The window's busted. Why would the window be busted? Suddenly, I realize what I'm looking for is what's not there: the hum of my laptop. There on the table in the connecting room...the table is a mess. It's like when you move furniture and you can tell because that part of the carpet or floor is a different color. There is only one spot on the table without clutter. A laptop-sized hole. Oddly, I notice that my modem jack is still there. It connects to the credit-card modem in the computer. The robber unhooked that to take the computer. I guess he didn't know you need that to get on the Internet. What an odd thing to notice.
The days afterward are a blur. I only worked one of them. The rest of the time I went to every pawnshop in the state I could find. The cop told me the robber probably unloaded the computer on the street, but if I was going to try pawnshops, to offer to buy the computer. Ostensibly all pawned items are checked to a stolen goods database, but the cop doesn't have much faith in this. I offer to buy the computer everywhere I go. I offer to pay double. It's not the computer itself I want so badly. But no one has it, or will admit it.
Now, after 54 or 55-I lost track-pawnshops, I've given up. I honestly don't know what to do. I'm exhausted. I just called in sick to work. I need sleep.
It still hurts just reading those words. January 1 of the next year my friend Koz got me a desktop; I'm writing on it now. I'll always be grateful to him for that. I didn't set up the computer for almost a month after I got it; something no one understood. What I tried to explain to people then-and I don't think anyone but my brother understood-was that the computer didn't mean much. Well, it did. It cost me $3000. I was still paying it off. But I had over 10,000 pages of material on there. Not only every column, but also all the ideas that hadn't made it into columns yet. All my important correspondence was there. (Under the delusion I'd one day be great, I'd been saving it all like Washington or Jefferson, for posterity and future generations.)
Most importantly, though, were my two books. All my notes, my thoughts, my chapters, character sketches, plot ideas...gone. I'd saved about 400 pages on disks, but it was a laborious process and the tyranny of the urgent, you know? I never got it done. And now it's gone. I was told to rewrite, but how can you, when every chapter, every page, every sentence, every word reminds you of how pale an imitation this new "work" is, and how much superior the original was? You know what I mean. You think of an idea, a song; whatever, and you don't write it down right then. You can never get it right later. That's how it is for me.
So that was 2000 and 2001. I don't even want to talk about last year. It's a pattern, though. I heard this great line in a movie: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action." Actually, 2001 proved it to me, but last year was the nail in the...that's a bad analogy.
It's almost
Even those dreams though, are better than the nameless ones. The ones that truly suck my soul away are the dreams I couldn't tell if I wanted to. They are in another language-a dream language-and to even attempt to translate them into our world would render them impotent and childish, and as bad as this sounds you don't want to give voice to these dreams unless you could convey their impact to someone else.
I actually have been trying to sleep, but it's not working. I think I'll check email.
Gut shot.
There it is. I know what it is before I even open it. Strange; the time stamp on the email is
It's almost a relief to see it. I'd been expecting this piece of news for months now: although the black and white of print is still a stabbing pain, but not as bad as I thought. I wonder if this means I can now relax? Maybe not.
In 2000 there were two things (although the magnitude of my friend boycotting me didn't become apparent for several days). Last year there were two things too. Idly I wonder if one year there are two things and the next year one, which would make this year a one-timers. Not enough date to make a pattern, I guess.
I've been awake for a while, which means I actually did sleep. I guess the days leading up to now-all that dread-took its emotional toll and knocked me out. I sleep well, too. No dreams that I can remember. I consider getting up, but I hear footsteps above me, and I don't feel up to facing anyone.
I remember this story my mother tells about when she was a kid, and was downstairs in her house with her mother and sisters. They heard footsteps upstairs and assumed it was their dad, so they all stayed quiet to surprise him. The footsteps left after a while, though. That night they told their dad and he said he hadn't been home that day.
I wonder if that could be me. Maybe there is a stranger above me right now. Probably not, though, since I can hear pans clanging and the sink running. I don't think a burglar would do dishes. (Maybe a clean-freak burglar? That would make a funny story. Must make a note of that.)
I'm coming to terms with the email from earlier. All things considered, it's not the end of the world. It's better than last year's email. I've also decided to write about that. In for a penny, right?
I don't have a journal entry for the first half, though. It's not that interesting, anyway, so I can relate it briefly: I had been keenly aware of the day-and its significance-so the letter in the mail wasn't a big shock. At first it was great: $428 and change, until I thought about it. I hadn't been back to work since the year before. I sure tried, though. Someday I'll tell you the story of the woman who made it her life's mission to keep me from coming back. I'd been fighting for months to get reinstated. The check from my employer was vacation pay, and once I thought it through I realized the fight was more or less over.
It's
Note to self: never tempt the gods of fate by thinking you've gotten them. Second note to self: recording on one of these things is by definition a "note to self" so there is no need to say "note to self." [Hysterical giggling afterward for 25 seconds or so until the tape shuts off. The kind of laughter that you can hear in the tone is close to panic]
Why the fuck did you do that?
I hate you.
I’ve never hit a girl but I wish you were here
So I could lash out and smack you silly.
I wish you were here so I could yell at you
And tell you what a fucking idiot you are.
I wish you were here, so I could tell you
All the things worth living for.
I wish you were here, so I could tell you
I loved you and appreciated you and I'm sorry
I didn’t say that more.
Mostly, I wish you were here, because then
You wouldn’t be dead.
I'm sorry if the language offends. Normally I don't put that in this column, but except for spelling, I've kept all the things from the past word-for-word like I wrote it. And I most emphatically do not apologize for the sentiment.
I know _______ had been depressed lately, but she was always depressed, and after a while you learn to take the suicide threats with a grain of salt. The email came from a mutual friend. She had actually died two days earlier. I think I felt guilty that I didn't take her seriously this time when she was depressed. God knows we had before, but her threats had always been ways to manipulate and get attention, and to be honest, it got old. I think mostly I felt guilty that I had drifted from her enough-preoccupied with my own life-that I didn't know she was that desperate, and of course I didn't know she died until somebody told me. That, and I hate it when this happens. Leaves everyone else holding the bag. I didn't really hate her, or want to hit her, but I think all the above is where the emotion from the poem came from.
I had meant to be alone as much as possible today, not wanting to bring everyone else down, but I relented after awhile. It seemed drama-queen of me. I watched some TV with my dad. It was good. I even laughed a little. I'm getting to be pretty good about September 22. You give me a few more of these and I'll start smiling and making jokes (always did love Gallows Humor). I'm debating on whether to send this. I had thought to make this a private column just for me-I've done that once before-but that seems drama-queen too.
I thought maybe just to make this Hyperion X-partly for the language, but also the subject matter, which certainly isn't for everyone. But I've been getting on myself for months on being more open-it's the only way to make yourself a better writer-and what's more open than this?
Only 13 more minutes, and then I go back to my regular life. I wish I had something profound to sum all this up, but I don't. I think I'll take a walk.
To be continued...
Hyperion
Yesterday is now over. I survived. Six years and counting, but this year’s was a bit of a surprise. Several of you wrote/talked to me during the day, with various strategies or coping mechanisms. I would like to write a whole column just on that, but there’d be too many swear words. I don’t know what it is in some people that makes them think belittling is an effective problem-solving technique. Even if I was off my rocker, how does that help? The feelings are still real. And I strenuously dispute the claim I’m wrong. I believer various days can have it in for you. That’s about 10,000 times more likely than a literal Genesis, but people believe that every day and no one calls them on it. But like I said, I better stop talking about this or I’ll go all postal.
As promised, I am detailing 2003, 2004 and 2005 here now that they are all over. When I originally wrote this column two years ago, I cobbled together journal entries, poetry and extemporaneous thoughts. It came out kind of garbled, but I was in no mood to “prettify” things. I also blanked out people’s names, which confused some, who assumed all the blanks referred to the same person. For the next three years, I’m writing it all at once, and my plan is to be much more concise and straight-forward. I’ll figure out a better system for the names too.
To tell this part I have to back up a bit, to ’94-’95. I met “Cara” in college. She was pregnant, and this fact caused her trouble with the Christian university (which is worth a column in and of itself, but another time). Another time, another place there might have been a future with Cara; there was certainly a mutual chemistry, but her life was in upheaval and I didn’t want to press. Not only did she have the baby and school issues (she eventually dropped out under extreme pressure from the administration), but more than both of those was the baby’s father, “Carlito.”
Carlito was a high-ranking member of a powerful
I kept in touch best I could with Cara for the next couple of years. In 1997 I moved back to
Anyway, I helped as I could, as a friend, but I didn’t have the ability or money to get her out. But I met someone who did. His name was “Alex.” Alex was a former big shot in the same gang. Alex wasn’t educated, but he was very very smart. A few years before I met him Alex invested in a company called Mandalay Entertainment. You’ve seen their movies; a tiger going through the jungle is the moving logo. Alex made enough money to quit.
I met Alex at the pizza place I worked. He only had the job as a cover to explain all his money. Only guy I knew who claimed tips, and it wasn’t uncommon for Alex to claim several hundred dollars a night, far in excess of what he could possibly make. Alex drove a Lexus LS400 to deliver the pizzas, and when I asked him why, he told me he didn’t want to mess up his nicer cars.
Whatever past Alex had, he was a very nice person. He always did what I asked, which for someone from his position was impressive. He also let about 12 of the employees at any one time live in his mansion. Alex would help you if you needed it. I helped Alex set up some tax shelters for money he had going in and out of his house, and he told me if I never needed him to just ask.
We set up this dummy business. You know how companies drug test people, especially if there’s an accident? In response to this an industry was born: additives you put in your urine test to remove traces of drugs. This was a loophole as it wasn’t illegal yet and most big companies hadn’t moved to outlaw it. For legal purposes, though, the ads in magazines always read “For novelty use only.”
My idea was to actually send people bogus product. After all, who are they going to complain to? Alex bought this bit vat and we poured in Lemon/Lime generic gatorade powder and water. I think we added a touch of salt and two or three other ingredients in trace quantities. We then packaged it up to send out. Obviously word eventually gets out, but what I had Alex do was recreate the shell company under a new name every two or three months. It was a perfect scam, and my conscience was clear as I figured anyone stupid enough to take drugs and crafty enough to attempt to hide such deserved to be ripped off. However, I wouldn’t take my share of the money for it.
However, after a couple of months, I did find a use for the money. I talked to Alex about Cara, and asked if he could help. Alex was aware of Carlito, and hated the man. For all his gangster ways, Alex had a real code about him. He never let his people sell anything harder than weed or X, and he never allowed selling to kids. That probably sounds lame, but in his world it was pretty big. Alex also was death on hurting women.
I had Alex set Cara up somewhere. I told him I didn’t want to know where, in case Carlito ever connected this to me and came to ask me questions. My bigger worry was that I’d track her down and try to reenter her life. Much as I might (and she) want that, it was best she made a clean break, just her and her son, now two. Cara couldn’t even tell her mother, because for sure that witch would rat her out to Carlito.
The deed was done. Alex set Cara up in an apartment with a car and got her a job. He checked in on her every couple of months, but otherwise she was on her own. I was sad because I missed my friend, but happy she had found a new life. I don’t know if Carlito ever suspected Alex, but if he did he knew he didn’t have the juice to force Alex to talk.
Two years later I heard from Alex. We kept in touch a bit, but not too much. Someone had seen Cara in her new place, by chance, and Carlito found out about it. I dropped everything and few to that state. I worked for Delta at the time so it was easy to just get on a plane and go. Carlito had found Cara and broken her arm. I met Alex there. Cara had already fled, with her son. Alex left too, to see to her and make sure she got medical care and set up somewhere else. I was getting ready to leave too, when I ran into Carlito. I wasn’t sure if he remembered me. He did. He put two and two together and we fought. I broke Carlito’s back, but I stopped short of killing him. There’s a lot of nights when I wish I had.
I realize I’m not telling this concisely, so I’ll skip ahead over several less important points and get to the main one. On
This year wasn’t life or death, but it still was a heavy blow. I entered a writing contest; first place one hundred thousand dollars. (What I wrote ended up being column 300, if you’re bored and want to scroll through the Table of Contents and find it.) I knew it was a long shot to win, but everyone around me who read it was so positive that I started believing I had a real shot. I started spending the money in my head. You know how you do. The results were announced on the website of the foundation on September 21st. I didn’t check until the 22nd. It was a blow to me, as pumped as I’d been. However, that would be such a small thing that it wouldn’t count if not for the other thing.
I did some work for a “Mickey” on a patent he was working on. It was a compression lever for a chemical plant. I knew some of the dynamics and mathematics involved, and helped Mickey there. But my real contribution was the legal and presentation side. I spent months working with Mickey writing up the patent application and getting the presentation ready. We showed it to some industry consultants and they were sky high on the idea. Mickey promised me 15% of the sale, which he was hoping to make to one of the big engineering firms in
Well, these things take months and months, and in the meantime I moved up here to
Anyway, if for some reason you’re still reading this gargantuan column, you know where I’m going with this. On
Might as well get this over with. That way I can put this day to rest for another year. One is a health concern I’m not sharing here, because of the personal nature and because I’m not sure what if anything it means. Obviously you may find out in the future, since I think it’s pretty clear by now I’ll write about anything in my life.
The other was an email I received right before the day ended. Came out of left field, it did. Just when I’d started to believe the day had nothing serious in it for me. Rather than synopsize the email, I’ll just reprint it here. I’ve left the message intact verbatim, except for some name and number changes which should be obvious:
Return-path:
Date: Thu,
From: XXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com>
Subject: what we talked about last time
To: hyperionchronicles@shaw.ca
Message-id: <20050923053346.41785.qmail@web35712.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;
h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding;
Hyperion
I havent talked to you in almost five months. I lost
your address for a long time but then Jessie said you
had a website and i found it and got it that way. Man
I am so sorry to be the one to tell you but Cara's
dead. I ran into her mother two weeks ago at Vons and
I didn't want to ask cause you know its wierd but she
brought it up. I guess Cara died in January. Caras
mom now believes us about Juan and she said Juan found
Cara in December when Cara came here for Christmas. I
know its stupid right after all we both warned her but
she hadn't seen her mother in like six years and the
kid and everything. I don't know if Juan did it
himself or had one of his crew although you know its
more likely he would do it himself. i don't have the
same pull with in the Life that I used to but if can
prove its him my people will move. I will be in touch
in the meantime give me a call on my cell my number is
619XXXXXXX. Again Im sorry man but this is what we
feared for so long. Lets keep in touch okay bro?
Alex
I can’t say I’m surprised. Neither Alex nor I had been able to track her down in the last two years. I can’t imagine the life she had, always on the run. It’s over now. I’ll probably feel more in a day or two, but right now I’m numb. And I’m done. See you all Monday.
Hyperion
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