sageshadows

[sageshadows]

Fountain Pen

The first question I usually get from people when I tell them I bought a fountain pen is “Why?” To them, a fountain pen is an antiquated relic, back when pocket protectors were in vogue (and for good reason, as my ink-covered fingers soon discover).  

The death of the fountain pen began long ago, in the 1940’s with the advent of the ballpoint pen. The ballpoint pen was everything the fountain was not: clean, long-lasting, cheap. And so the almost surgical, inexorable march towards more efficient writing implements began. I almost feel bad that I’m flying in the face of progress by owning this inferior tool.

With that in mind, I wonder why I bought a fountain pen as I adjust the nib, cutting myself in the process and writing lines on my finger in a crimson red that is decidedly not the black ink I bought nor the blue ink I received by accident. I wonder why as I feverishly scrub my fingers under the running tap, trying to get my blue fingers to somewhat resemble their original color.

The first time I saw anybody use a fountain pen was when a friend decided to buy one to improve his penmanship. Soon, sheets of white printer paper were tattooed with the names of other friends, scribbled reminders and notes, lists of things needed to be done. Another friend would often borrow the pen, and write the most absolutely beautiful words I had ever seen. It was an odd juxtaposition; he was gigantic and looked sooner to turn me upside-down by my ankles to shake out my lunch money than to write my name in gorgeous font. Yet, there he was, writing the D’s and L’s with a calligrapher’s flourish.

And so as I sit there, my cursor over the checkout button on Amazon for one Noodler’s Ahab flex nib fountain pen and one bottle of black (not blue) ink, I realize that I am, in effect, buying a DIY artistic kit. Somehow, decidedly not artistic David believes that with a thirty dollar purchase, he will somehow morph into an artist savant.

The truth is somewhere between that lofty aspiration and absolute bunk. After I figure out how to get the ink mostly on the page and not on my body parts, I start practicing with names. I find that I love my capital M’s and N’s, end up hating the letter D (which is a shame), discover a way to make the letter B look straight off a college diploma.

It’s an exercise in repetitions and variations, as I tweak angles, line thicknesses, styles. But for the first time in my stuttering artistic career, I find that mistakes aren’t a cause for concern. It’s not a mishit note that ruins the entire piano piece. It’s not a cringe-worthy piece of writing that is long on circumlocution and thematic grandeur but short on substance.

To be frank, grasping a fountain pen makes me no more artistic than someone buying a stethoscope at their local costume store makes them a doctor. Probably a bit more annoying on Snapchat, sure, but definitely not more artistic. Nevertheless, the pen has a certain cachet to it, harkening back to a day where writing was more personal, more stylistic, than the mundane task it’s been relegated to today. So while my writing may not be up to snuff with trained professionals, it feels uniquely me, an expression of myself in monochrome.

And with every stroke I take, I feel a bit of magic leaving the nib and flowing onto the blank canvas. To me, that’s art enough.

[sageshadows]

Flight

I stand on the edge of the metal cliff overlooking the twinkling Chicago skyline. The stars and the office lights fight to attract my attention, two islands of light in the dark night. The chilly autumn wind from Lake Michigan pushes against my back, as if urging me to jump.

After all, that’s why I’m here.

To jump.

To fly into the Chicago night.

To have the weight of my problems drag me into the darkness.

And in my dreams, I jump, falling into the abyss, flying faster and faster, past floor after floor, until my miseries evaporate, until I become nothing but air and the ground rushes up to meet me and collide with my body in a sickening –

Thud. The door to the roof of the Hancock Tower flings open, slamming against the wall and making a thunderous sound that snaps me from my reverie. A uniformed police officer stands in the offending door’s frame.

“Sir, please step away from the edge of the building,” the officer says, walking towards me with purpose. At first glance, he seems young, no older than thirty or thirty-five, but the creases in his face appear when his face comes into focus. He looks more wizened than youthful.

I disobey his command, moving even closer to the edge. “One more step and I’ll jump off,” I threaten. The police officer stops. He slowly raises both hands, as if saying, “Alright, alright, I’m backing off.” Trying to size him up, I just stand there, silent. I suspect he’s trying to figure me out as well.

“Look, I know why you’re here.” The silence is getting to me, and I’m compelled to say something. “You’re one of those suicide negotiators. Nothing you say or do is going to change my mind, Mr. Negotiator. Honestly, I have nothing to live for. I’m prepared to jump right now. So, please, just leave.”

This is a blatant lie. While secluded in the dark recesses of my own mind, it’s easy to fantasize about killing myself, ending my misery right here and now. It’s so, so easy. Just jump and off you go. One hundred floors of introspection, one hundred floors to realize how fucked up your life has become before having it mercifully ended by an unforgiving Earth. But fantasizing and actually jumping? All of those emotions that I’ve suppressed, all of that anxiety, panic, fear, terror? They all come bubbling up when I imagine my broken body against the concrete, spread-eagled.

“The name’s Nathan,” the police officer comments. It feels like he’s trying to defuse the situation. “Look, you don’t have to do this. I’m here for you. Just talk to me and I can help.”

Why does he think he could somehow, amazingly, magically help me become whole again? “Like you’d fucking know anything,” I shout. “You ever feel completely hopeless? Do you even know what it’s like to lose everything in your life? I bet not. So, why the fuck are you here?”

How can anybody understand my pain? How could he know about all that I’ve been through? All of the negative emotions wash away the peace of mind that I had found dreaming about suicide. They bubble at the surface until I am ready to explode.

“Honestly, I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know your name, I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t know why you’re hurting. But I’d like to.” He has this shit-eating grin on his face, and it makes me want to drag him down with me.

“You don’t know anything about me, so how can you fix me? What, you think you’re some doctor or something and a Band-Aid or two and off I go, fixed? Again, why the fuck are you here?”

Nathan takes my outburst in stride, his face not betraying any sense of antagonism. “I’ll make you a deal. I answer your question and if the answer is satisfactory, you tell me your story. Fair trade?”

As much as I want him to leave me alone, I’m a bit curious. “Fair trade.”

“It was my first day on the job. You learn all the standard things in training, what to do if someone’s about to take their life, what to do if there’s a hostage situation, but none of that’s real life. There isn’t really a script when it comes to these things. It’s not like those cop shows where you get a sniper that shoots the gun out of the person’s hand and everybody is saved and lives happily ever after. Not even close.  

“Anyways, I got dispatched to my first case. Crazy ex-husband holding a woman and their child hostage in the house. I tried to get the husband to calm down. It didn’t work, so we were about to send in the SWAT team. I can still hear it like it was yesterday. He shot the woman first. Three times in the head.” He pantomimed gunshots with his hands. 

“Then he turned the gun on the girl, two bullets, straight through the heart. The last bullet, he used on himself. Put the barrel against his head, pulled the trigger, now he’s dead. Bang. Straight out of Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen couldn’t have said it better.

“They said it wasn’t my fault, that the guy had mental issues, that I did the best I could do. I still went to counseling for two years after that. I still have nightmares where I wake up in a cold sweat because I hear those six gunshots and the screaming.” His entire body is trembling. “God, I can’t get the screaming out of my head right now.”

His story disturbs me. Ever since the plan to jump off the Hancock Tower took root in my mind, I felt detached from everybody else. It became easy to dismiss other people’s concerns for me. When Billy from the office came over with that care package and the saccharine, “I know exactly how you’re feeling right now,” line or when Jane from the daycare said, “If there’s anything, anything I can do, just let me know,” I would always think What the fuck do you know about my suffering? as I retreated into the labyrinth of my mind. But not this time. Something about Nathan just feels more real, more visceral. I can’t draw my attention away from him.

After a minute of silence, he continues. “That’s ‘the fuck why I’m here’.” It’s as if he throws the words that I yelled at him back into my face. “To make sure that never happens again. To make sure another person never has to relive that horror.” He takes a deep breath. I almost pity him; he seems less like an angel and more of a broken down man. Kind of like me.  

“Now, why are you here?” he asks. The question makes no sense to me.

Why am I here? He’s waiting for an answer, but I don’t understand what he’s asking for what seems to be an eternity.

Oh, that’s right. I’m here to off myself.

“Nathan, right? My name’s William. Here.” I carefully extract a tattered, tear-stained photograph from my shirt pocket, then offer it to the negotiator. He walks up to me, and I notice him almost reach for my arm before demurring. Instead, he takes the photo gingerly from my hands. It’s like he knows that to me, the picture is a treasure. He returns back to the center of the building, intently studying the faces in the snapshot.  

“That’s my family,” I whisper. I sit down on the edge of the building, my legs dangling over nothing but air.

“Believe it or not, but that’s me holding Kaylie. She was 8. My wife’s holding Rebecca. She was 10. She liked being called Becca. That’s my wife right there. Stacey. Ain’t she a beauty? All gone, like….like that.”

Ever since the thought of suicide blossomed in my mind, all of the anguish and pain that I felt was replaced with an eclectic mixture of depression and acceptance. Suicide to me was an escape from reality, a way to stop all of the hurt. I worshipped it like a god, and in turn, it helped me deal with all of the negative emotions until every last form of emotional expression had withered away.

“What happened?” Nathan tenderly asks. He’s looking at me, waiting for a response that I can’t articulate. All of my emotions, grief, despair, pain, sorrow, all clamor for attention, for some sort of expression. The emotion that wins out is amazement. Amazement at how he could keep it together enough to ask me how I was feeling. We’re just two fucked up people in a fucked up world.

“It was five years ago. We were driving back from a family trip.” Rotating my wedding ring back and forth helps me keep on a composed façade. “The girls were sleeping in the backseat. Stacey wanted to drive the rest of the way back, so I was in the passenger seat, asleep. From what I heard, there was some drunk driver that slammed into the side of our car while we were on the Du Sable Bridge. Apparently the car swerved off the bridge, straight into the water.

“I was in a coma for two months. Medically induced, for my own good, the doctors said. When I woke up, they told me what happened. Stacey apparently died upon impact. She was lucky that she didn’t have to hear the other news. Becca and Kaylie both drowned. They couldn’t save them. Half an hour of CPR, and it didn’t do shit. Brain dead, they said. Nothing to be done. They said I was a miracle. ”

The pain from viciously punching the ledge, over and over and over, reverberates through my hand, through my arms, and straight to my heart. “My entire life, ruined,” I said, as my eyes dam the reservoir of tears that well up. In some twisted way, the depression and drive to commit suicide helped me cope with the cornucopia of negative emotions. Without those crutches, all the emotions are hitting me like a roaring wave, knocking me over. As I struggle to get up, I’m drowning.

“I know what you mean about the dreams,” I continue, after composing myself. “Every night. Every. Single. Fucking. Night. I hear the car crash and I hear the water splash and I hear the girls scream. It haunts me every night.”

Nathan gives me this pained look that is a mixture of sympathy and frustration. It looks like he’s fumbling for words in his mind, but nothing comes out. Shit’s never easy, is it, Nathan? I want to ask him out of spite. Instead, I hold my tongue.

After a while, he gently questions, “So, what now, William? How is this,” Nathan sweeps his arm towards the ledge, towards the road one hundred stories below, “going to solve anything?”

“Don’t you understand? I have nothing to live for. My family’s dead, I couldn’t do jack shit about it, and I’m somehow supposed to overcome this shit and become stronger than ever? That what you’re getting at? Because this isn’t a fucking fairy tale.”

I find myself standing. Below, the office lights illuminate tiny pockets of the darkness. The ground beckons me. You’re a useless shit, the ground says. You’ll feel great when you’re dead. Just jump, William.

“I’m going to jump.”

As if almost on cue, Nathan responds, with an edge in his voice, “No you aren’t. Look over here.”

Nathan has both hands on the photograph, ready to tear it in half. “Don’t you fucking dare,” I blurt out, rushing towards him.

He relaxes, holds onto the photograph with his right hand while motioning with his left, urging me to calm down and sit. “Please, sit. Please.” He sounds desperate.

“Why the hell do you care so much, Nathan? It’s not your life on the line!”

“This is my second case, William.”

“Why does that—” I begin, before the implications of his statement hit me. Damn.

Nathan looks like he’s on the verge of tears. “I don’t think I can handle another failure. So please, please, please. Sit.”

Like a little child listening to an adult, I do as I’m told.

“Thank you,” Nathan sighs. “I’m sorry. It’s just – you know how hard it is to watch someone die? Some complete random stranger just die? It’s the most fucked up thing you can ever witness,” he takes a deep breath. “I never want to see it again.”

He collects himself, casting his vulnerable eyes down. When he looks up and makes eye contact with me again, the vulnerability is replaced with a look of conviction.

“I know it feels like you let them down. Trust me, I know how that feels. And I know that people want to make it seem like some sort of a fucking fairy tale. It isn’t. But. You were going to jump. But you didn’t. You stopped when I threatened to tear up this photograph. You stopped when I begged you not to. Why? Why does it matter what I think or do? Why not just jump anyways?”

“For fuck’s sake, Nathan. I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to convince me not to do this?”

“Just answer the question. Why?”

“It’s because I’m scared.” The answer comes out, automatically, subconsciously, before I can even process what I say.

“Why? Why are you scared?” Nathan probes.

“Because I feel guilty that I’m the only one alive. That they couldn’t take me instead of Stacey and Becca and Kaylie. And that despite all that, I still stubbornly cling onto my life, even though I don’t deserve it.”

“Why?” Nathan presses, pushing deeper and deeper until nothing seems to make sense anymore.

“I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t know.”

“It’s the same reason why it hurts so much to see someone commit suicide right in front of you. It’s because life’s important. Stacey’s life is important. Becca’s life is important. Kaylie’s life is important.” His voice rises in volume with every sentence until it hits a crescendo. “Your life is important.”

For some reason, that line resonates with me. It doesn’t make too much sense in my emotional state, but something clicks. My life is important. Huh.

“So let’s say if it’s important. So what?” I’m curious now. I want to hear what Nathan has to say.

“So do something with it. If you think your life is important, don’t throw it away over that ledge.” Nathan let that last sentence hang in the air, twist in the wind, sink in.

“But what do I do? How do I find meaning in living? I’ve lost everything, and you want me to somehow, in the ashes, find a reason to live?”

“I can’t answer that for you. Maybe you’ll find it tomorrow. Maybe you’ll find it next year. Maybe you’ll never find it. But you never know unless you try.”

I stand up, staring up into the sky. The stars seem to mischievously twinkle, as if they were trying to tell me something.

“You know,” half-talking to Nathan and half-thinking aloud, “my family loved looking at the stars. We used to pull out a blanket and lay down on clear nights. Kaylie loved naming things, and she’d always point at a star and say, ‘Look, daddy! That one’s your star.’ We all had our own stars. A tiny piece of ourselves up in the cosmos.”

The stars that Kaylie had generously given to us shone brightly against the dark backdrop. That one’s Stacey’s. That one’s Becca’s. That one’s Kaylie’s. There’s one star missing, and it takes me a while, scanning the night sky, before I see it. And that one’s mine. My piece.

A droplet hit my hand. Then another, and another. I’m crying. The tears roll down my cheek. Something about that little star, millions of light-years away, made me feel connected to my family. That somehow, against all odds, they weren’t dead but were living, living inside every tear I shed and every word I said.

Nathan had come over and was gently tugging me by my hand. I follow his lead, follow the tug in my hand. We walk away from the ledge towards the middle of the building and once there, he holds me tightly in his arms. He rocks me gently, back and forth. I instinctively push my face into his chest and weep.

“Shhhh, shhhh, it’s going to be OK. It’s going to be alright,” he soothingly whispers to the forty-year old infant in his arms as he protectively embraces me and strokes my hair. Nathan’s uniform is covered in my tears and snot, but I don’t care about crying and sniffling in the arms of a complete stranger. The emotions that I had killed in my attempt to end my suffering wash over me.  

“You’ve probably gotten enough New Age philosophy crap to fill a Barnes and Noble bookshelf, and I want to spare you the bullshit, but bear with me here,” Nathan ruminates, after my crying is reduced to nothing more than tired whimpers. “Life’s kind of a funny thing. We lose sense of how important life is because of all of the fucked up things that happen to us. Shitty thing after shitty thing until we’re just desensitized. We forget about how much we cherished life and then we lose ourselves… we can’t seem to find a reason to live anymore.”

He hands me the picture. “This is yours,” he offers, softly but with earnest insistence. I take it gingerly from his hand and look at it again.

The people that smiled back at me were from a distant past that now only existed in ephemeral memories. For all these years, those smiles had haunted me as I sunk deeper and deeper in my misery and depression, as I wallowed in all that I lost. But for the first time since that fateful day, I saw myself in them, and them in me. For the first time, I felt like I had some sort of a roadmap in my hand that would help me find myself again, help me find my life.

Life. For the longest time, I thought of life as black and white, living or dead. I never thought about it as a continuation, that my family lived on inside of me and that every moment that I lived was another moment that they did.

“You know, one of my favorite memories of Stacey was on our first date. We went to some hippie coffee shop, and I remember Stacey running her fingers through the bookshelf and pulling out a book titled The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. And she told me that if she ever caught me with a book like that, there wouldn’t be a second date. We both laughed. I don’t think she’d be really happy right now, with her husband in the arms of some New Age guru on top of the Hancock. ”

I don’t know what came over me then, but I start laughing because of that absurd realization. At first, a hesitant chuckle, timid because I’m not sure if it was appropriate. Then, louder and louder until it hits a crescendo, a belly laugh that comes from the realization that life, despite its trials and tribulations, is wonderful. I’m laughing for all the happy memories I shared with my family, I’m laughing for the pieces of their lives that were still somewhere buried deep in my soul. I’m laughing for life itself, for all the moments I experienced and for all the moments I would experience. For once, it feels like there is a reason to live, even though I couldn’t grasp that reason right there on the top of the Hancock Tower.

As I laugh, my miseries start to dissipate. Not completely. No, that wouldn’t happen for a while, if ever. But just enough for me to feel light. To feel free. I feel as if I could fly up, up into space and up into the stars where my family lived on in my memory.

Nathan’s arms wrap tightly against me, his radiating warmth protecting me from the cold concrete roof of the Hancock Tower. The ledge that I had stood on for so long sits meekly, far away from us. The door to the building is wide open, and the lights inside the building illuminate the roof that we’re on, inviting us into the warmth and safety. The office lights in the Chicago skyline turn off, one by one, as I lay there on the top of the Hancock, until there is nothing left except for me and Nathan.

I look up at the sky and see the stars shining. And for a moment, in my mind, I forget what it meant to feel the weight of gravity pulling me down as I take off in flight.