SNAPSHOTS

FEBRUARY 20 2005

I wake up blue after a late night-early morning nap at 5:45 AM when everything is a shadow and electric light from the television screen flickers throughout the room. I sit up in bed and put on a shirt and some shorts and wrap a blanket around me like toga. Then I rub the goop from out of my eyes and put on my glasses to read some text scrolling across the bottom of the screen: CNN BREAKING NEWS - HUNTER S. THOMPSON SUICIDE CONFIRMED.

Before I took my nap vague details began to appear but nothing was final. Now that it has become fact, etched into the history books, validated by reluctant voices of family members at numerous press conferences, I cannot help but contemplate the self-determined act, wonder what he felt at the precise moment of exodus. What did you hear then, Hunter? What did you see, or taste, or smell?

What happens when the spirit is ripped from its shell?

I think that death would be much like an adventure to a carnival where the normal and bizarre converge into one; images cease to make sense, pleasure and disgust blend together, what is human and what is Nature completely indistinguishable from each other.

Hunchback and twisting my body to avoid intermittent breezes, I walk out into the dawn and attempt to light a cigarette. Since it is extremely cold I try to remember Henry David Thoreau and his winter walk, how he would hike in the bitter chill past a frozen Walden Pond, how he could imagine a fire rage within his body, deep in his spirit, enabling him to feel warm, as if he were at home in front of the fireplace. For me, at this moment, it is nearly impossible to warm myself through such deliberate thought, especially as a negative fifteen degree wind collides with my face.

Shy clouds sift soft snowflakes all around me which melt and pass away upon contact with my skin; the construction hums and early-bird bums mine dumpsters for scraps and I do not feel, to be honest, normal at all. The moon hangs around for a bit and it is gorgeous and I think to myself i would like to be up more often at dawn when the moon is up and the sun is up and it is in between night and day and it is night and day at the same time. But soon the moon which was once there is now absent and I think of Hunter, and myself, and look out into the desolate empty streets filled with the orange haze of streetlamps and look across to other apartments and homes where all the lonely folk, disparate and cold, sleep in their comfort, utterly deprived.

NOVEMBER 23 2004

WHAT I WILL MISS MOST ABOUT LIFE:

Definitely Thanksgiving, the smell of it all, the smell of grandma's cooking, scent of her perfume and her white crispy hair; the same tattered checkered tablecloth, the special forks and spoons, the beautiful wine glasses which twinkle under the expensive chandelier; the crème colored apron my mother dirties every year, and the jade and gold rings on her torn and battered fingers; and especially, her hearty laugh; the sound of the doorbell and the beeps of mini-vans as they lock; other familiar doors that open and close with a creak; the piano and banjo and the sound of clothes crinkling upon clothes between close and extended hugs; the sighs, the smiles, the cries; the unheard tune sung by someone at a red-light which is viewed through the rear-view mirror; pop rocks and Rubiks cubes and wrist clocks and roller coasters and hot apple cider on a snow day, funnel cakes and bicycle rides with no hands; watching marshmallows melt into hot chocolate; swimming out to the breakers on the lake; the way a tack moves into drywall as it is pushed in; acting pretentious at a coffee-shop porch melting in an afternoon summer sun, a novel with a broken spine next to a lit cigarette burning in the ashtray by the side; fingers which shake uncontrollably between pauses when writing; but most of all the writing: to write and write kept going by the chirps of birds and the reassuring knowledge that there will be early morning dew on the grass; and then the reading of what was written and not even knowing of what it meant or how it was even written at all.

FEBRUARY 20 2006

On the anniversary of Hunter’s death I have no woman, no real job; I live with my brother and his second wife. My infant niece cries in the room next door and wakes me up every night. But I still enjoy writing.

No; I depend on the writing to exist. But I’m not making any money from it; and I’m depressed, almost never sober, cold and hardened and I think often on it – how he closed his eyes, placed the chill metal nozzle, fit it in the soft area under his chin, locked it in place with the pressure of the shotgun pushing against the lower jaw, took in a long, extended breath of dank cabin air, pulled the trigger and then, the white.

CHECK LIST:
1 – Ask a woman if I can get into her pants so as to receive a painful slap across the face. And, hopefully it leaves a mark.
2 – Brand myself with dots through the putting-out of cigarettes on my arm.
3 – Write a poem on a piece of sharp paper and cut the inside webby parts of my fingers and toes.

The checklist will be here to remind of what transpired on that wintery night, that heroic deed; of the snow which fell light like confetti, and the lone sounds of pine tree boughs bending and creaking under the burden of the snow, and of owl’s hoots, and shrieks of mice as talons punctured soft, furry skin; and the sound of the shot rippling through nerves; the tear of flesh and crack of bone—the penetration and blood which birthed a new life.