I had spent the last five years trying to understand the words of the man with the hot air balloon. It has felt odd at times to go after what may well be the ravings of a madman; a map scrawled on a crumpled piece of paper, a scream of agony, a well-played stab at my name. It is amazing how easy it is to be haunted by one memory, one moment, one circumstance in one's life. I cannot rmember one day that the man left my mind, that his passion left my heart, or that his note left my pocket: often grasped by my fingertips, just to make certain it is still there. It always is, but I find it growing on my mind more and more in these days. It’s slowly become more valuable to me, as though the paper itself holds some spell over me. I hear his voice a little more often in my sleep and see his eyes a little more often in my waking mind. I remember the feel of his rough skin as his fingers had curled around mine, and the way that he smelled: a little bit like gunpowder, a lot like sweat, but at the same time, sweet, and a little bit too clean for a bloodied mess of a man. I remember the way it felt as his hand weakened in my grasp. I remember the light slowly leaving his eyes as his soul drifted away from his body. His voice grew softer; more desperate and less passionate. He was no longer protesting, no longer fighting, but now he was pleading, softly, gently, asking me to help, begging me to stay, willing me to continue on his legacy, though what legacy that is has plagued me to this very day.
When we come to the end of our stories, I wonder if we will all be like that? A pleading desperation that pierces mind and soul, that shows a man for who he is at the very core of his being. Is it possible that perhaps, out of anyone else in the world, that I knew this man more dearly and deeply than any other? For in any other instance, perhaps he would guard some spots of his true character. But on his deathbed, a man is neither guarded nor discreet. He spills his feelings, passions, and regrets to any listener, willing or unwilling as they may be.
He did not have a funeral, I feel you should know. Leastways not as far as i know. I stayed at his side until he drew his last breath, and they took him away. The nurses asked me many questions about the man, punctuated with "are you alright, sweetheart?" of course I was not alright, I had just watched a man die. And yet, I was strangely alright, or at least I was alright in whatever way I imagined that they had been asking. Would the memory haunt me for years to come? Certainly, but not so much the thought that I had seen a man fight for his life and lose as the idea of the man himself. Who was he? Where did he come from? What sort of a man was he? Was he a very good sort of man?
I was inclined to believe he was good, but I wonder at the idea that he could perhapds have been a very bad sort of man and I would not have noticed at all, for it is incredibly difficult to look into the eyes, filled with desperation, of a man on his deathbed, and think him very bad at all. He looks neither bad nor malicious, simply very weak. Perhaps, then, he had not looked like such a particularly good sort of man, yet I was still inclined to think so, and I believe the reason why is this: in reality, I have no sort of an idea what type of man he might have been, I just have vague guesses to his character based off his presumably mad rantings and even more mad moments of seeming clarity. And I am not at all certain where he came from, or if he had friends, or a family to call his own at all. I do not know what anyone who knew the man had thought of him, for I myself knew little of him. Yet, I think, I wanted someone to think him good. As he laid there, screaming, crying, pleading, grasping my hand: now tighter, then weaker - I thought him a very good sort of man. Because everyone on this earth ought to have someone who thinks them to be that sort of a person. So even if he were awfully terrible, even if he lived a life of madness and cruelty and terror, then as he laid there and died, he could be comforted by the thought that he was thought good at least once. Now, I must admit that I am uncertain if he even knew my thoughts at the time. At the age I had been, I imagine I must not have articulated much of this, and I cannot remember all that much of what I said to him.
However, I quite distinctly remember the moment that I asked how he had known my name. He reached out and stroked my face with his fingertips, "Ah, Madeline," he said, his voice soft and gentle, "one day you will understand all of this. I am sorry that I cannot tell you more, and I am sorry that I must do this, but this is the way that it must be. I am sorry that you have to be here, that you have to watch. But if this is how I must die, Maddie, I would not have it any other way.
I do not remember responding. It's difficult to know how one should respond to that sort of a declaration. For if he is indeed a madman, then there is no decent answer to give in any way. Then, should he be in absolute sincerity, with a clear mind, it is absolutely impossible to know how to respond, for I certainly did not know what he was thinking by any means. I asked him, as he was fighting in those last moments, what he had meant. He had rreplied that he meant nothing at all.
Of course he had lied. All words, of course, mean something. And though the man was clearly destroyed, his mind seemed altogether intact. As the doctors had rushed about, perhaps thinking he could still be saved, perhaps trying to convince him that he could still be saved, and perhaps not caring at all, he was a man who seemed to fall into a deep peace about his situation. He certainly was not comfortable, and the occasional scream of agony escaped his lips, growing weaker and weaker as his breath faded out altogether.
As his eyes closed on this world for the last time, he sighed softly, giving into something more that he had perhaps spent some time chasing. His breathing had become less and less frequent and each breath came with a struggle. Every few minutes, just when I had begun to lose hope, he would pull in another breath – gasping, fighting for air – then as soon as I would be convinced he was gone for good, there, another – struggling, shrieking. But the last breath, the last breath I knew as he drew in, and I was certain of when he let out. This was the end. There is something about a man giving himself up like that. You just know, you know when the fight is over.
I grasp the edge of the desk, curling my fingers around it and wishing for more stability than a wooden and metal table. Wishing that something were right, for once. Sometimes I think of that man – that enigma – as a sort of buffer against real life. In reality - in sitting here at this desk in this chair in this class reality – it would be ridiculous to think that he was anything more than a madman. It would be madness on my own part for even a little part of me to believe that the map in my pocket were anything more than the scrawlings of a man completely devoid of any sense at all.
Yet there is something in all of us that longs for that mysetery, for those secrets, for things that cannot be explained or perhaps even expressed. Ceratinly, we all try to say that we are very reasonable and practical. But at his core, does any man really wish for reason or practicality? All men wish for soemthing bigger and deeper and stronger and wider than they have ever known befor,e and so all men choose one of two paths. One man will strive for that untouchable, inexplicable something, while the other man gives in entirely. He settles for a life of reason and goodwill.
I would very much like to never be anything remotely like that second man. Certainly, we dreamers, chasers, fighters, we may be mad. In fact, it would ruin the very essense of running after that something if there were no level of madness at all. Nonetheless, as madmen we strive to live the fullest, most brilliant and colourful lives ever lived. And on our deathbeds, we'll die in tears and screams, holding the hands of young children, and drawing maps to places that are perhaps far or perhaps even nearer than we ever imagined.
Now as I silently finger that note, carefully recalling his words, written at the bottom, that idea of granduer once again rushes through my veins. Call it adrenaline, if you will. And perhaps it all may be reasoned down to chemicals, and the practical man is all correct in the end. Now, if we lived according to such, I imagine we would lead quite profitable lives, indeed, and that we would contribute something "of meaning" to society, perhaps a cure or a theory or a defense. But tell me this: what fun is life if all it is made of is practicality?
So tonight, I determine, I will go once again in search of what the map leads to. I will likely not find it, but perhaps the entire point and purpose of the note, and of that very man and his appearance in my life, was not so much the completion of the adventure or finding a reason or end that I find satisfying, perhaps the entire idesa was the chase, the hunt, the adventure. And that's the sort of life I want. The man said I must help, that I must not give up. And I will not give up, whether this is nothing or something.
Now, I must admit that perhaps the reason I am so inclined to chase after fairy tales and other fantasies is because once the yelling starts tonight, and once something gets broken, I may use any excuse to leave. I will not tell mother and father this, of course: they never knew of the man, and they never will. But I have to find some reason for myself - to justify my own leaving. I keep swearing to myself that I am not afraid and I am not weak and that I do not care what happens within some house that has hardly been a home at all. But if I were honest, perhaps I would say that I am terribly frightened and feel awfully small and afraid, like I got caught in the middle of a story I never even wanted to read.
Some nights are worse than others. When I was young, I used to climb out the window, hoping they would not see or notice that I had slipped out. I didn’t want to stay fr the screaming, and I most certainly did not want any of that directed at me. Somewhere along the way I grew quite a bit more callous to the situation and began using the front door. That was somewhere in that awkward teenage stage (that stage that everyone goes to, that place that lasts sometime around 13-15, where we think we are so punk or rock n’ roll or gothic or emo or whatever happens to children in those awkward years). It was not so much that I gave up caring, as I wished I had, and was fighting to show everyone else how much I did not care, and how it did not faze me at all.
Now, at the wizened old age of seventeen (if you understand my sarcasm), I have reverted back to the window. I would not go so far as to call it sneaking around, though I know that would be an absolutely correct term for my behavior. I simply refer to it as an avoidance mechanism. Or a coping mechanism. Or as a sanity mechanism. Or as somet sort of a mechanism that may sound fancy and inmpressive in some sort of a clinic where rich people go when they feel bad about themselves. Mechanisms, they always rant about those mechanisms. They say how we need them, to cope, to understand life, to deal with people. They nevcer tell you that the easiest way to deal with people is to simply stop caring. They never tell you what a relief it is to say "screw you" and climb down the scaffolding that's been backed up against your house for the last ten years. Because ten years ago was when mother was pregnant, and we were building a new room for the baby, right next to mine, you know, so she could be close to her big sister. That was when the fighting really started. When the accident happened, that's when it all fell apart. It was like, as much as they wanted to, adn as hard as they tried, they just could not make it work anymore.
Somehow, the whole world had progressed around us, but the scaffolding wsa still there - permenantly borrowed from father's company - leaning up against the walls outside my room. Leaning there, with the yelling inside, just like it had begun those ten years ago. It seemed like within the walls, no time had passed at all. everything remained exactly the same. We blamed and acted and lied and it all went on quite well until it grew dark outside.
I do not know why they stay together. Nothing gets fixed, nothing is right, and nobody is even being fooled. See, that seems to be the point of most marriages: to fool the rest of the world into think that somehow, out of everyone in this big, crazy, wild world, you wree the one lucky fool who figured it all out. You were the one who fell in love and never fell out. You were the one with the kids who always ate their vegetables and the house that never got infested with termites. Of course, some families do all this very well. My family was not one of them.
My famoily was being held up as precariously as the old scaffolding, just waiting for me to climb away, to leave and jump ship. Perhaps one day to never return. And why would I not return? Perhaps for a life of sensibility and order, that I could ammend through my own life what I had seen so terribly broken in that of my parents. Perhaps to chase rainbows and dreams and little sketches of maps drawn by dying men. Perhaps for nothing at all. And perhaps, just perhaps, I'm one of those dreamers, who will never find anything at all except the joy and love of the search itself. And I imagine I might be alright with any of those options, though I would find it detestable to pursue a life of ordinary and reason, perhaps that will one day be my path.
But not tonight. Tonight is all about those rainbows, baby.
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