Hit Head Here!

Reflections | Hit Head Here! | Gates of Hell | Winetasting with Darkside! | Darkside Destroys Himself!

Hit Head Here!

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A WORLD OUT OF REACH

Here it comes. I can tell...

Not a few moments before had I found him, crouched in the darkness of the stairwell, four feet from my door, pale and still as death itself. Zachery looked like a corpse; with skin jaundice yellow, the whites of his eyes riddled with a flaming crimson roadmap of pronounced veins and capillaries, lips pale blue with a tinge of violet, and breathing so shallow it was almost unnoticeable - save for the minuscule rasping being the only sound in the moments of stony silence to follow.

He was still alive - if indeed you can call this living...

The pronounced puncture wounds in his left arm and the loosened tourniquet drooping limply around his bony and slackened wrist leave me with no doubt as to the source of his disrepair. Furthermore, the oily reek of Schnapps that oozes from his every stinking pore stands as a clear indication that he had chosen to make a night of it.

My expression must be an extreme one, as his face registers an understanding of the picture I find myself confronted with. Our eyes meet, then his slowly wander down to his arm, then slip back up to rejoin mine. His face twitches, lightly, almost imperceptibly.

Undecided as to whether I should leave him be, help him up the flight of stairs back to his humble lodgings above, or wrap him in a binliner and put him in the dumpster outside with the other waste for collection on Tuesday, I stand transfixed, thoughtful, pensive. It is clear he shares my disgust at his condition. He knows what a foul and pestilent picture he forms. The self-loathing in those eyes is more intense than any I have seen before. More so even than that which I have borne witness to in a mirror.

A prisoner, incarcerated within the oubliette of a mind in torment. A captive seeking some merciful escape, some happy release. A face drawn and worn, weakened by the burden of the choice of hanging on or letting go. His body quivers briefly with the morbid sound of a death rattle in his lungs... his wish is granted.

His world splinters into a million pieces.

For all the fragments, alternatives, and possibilities, Zachery makes his choice.

He chooses to live one more day.

Here it comes. With mind wandering, his mouth will - as is always the case - dutifully follow.

His head lolls to one side, eyes rolled way back into their sockets, and a hoarse whisper emanates from those thin, blue, barely animate lips as he imparts an account of the world to which his chemical exploits have transported him to.

`Sitting alone on Mt. Gibraltar upon an early spring day, the warmth languidly creeping across and through. 4pm, and the sun is slowly sinking towards the west, though still bright and tumescent with energy. The sky, fading from a deep, rich blue to a powdered, milky hue upon the horizon. The land stretches out all around; broad, powerful, unyielding, unrelenting... yet beautiful in every way.

`The height, the altitude, the distance from the world below seems to lend me a great deal of clarity... a clarity that cannot be found within mere participation. But to be a spectator, looking down at the world going about its business; an ant nest, a bacterial colony, a mere particle of dust upon the celestial canopy of the infinite realm!'

As he utters the words, gradual changes were taking place upon his broken form. His body has shed its previous laxity, shoulders no longer drooping, head and neck no longer flopping independently from his twisted backbone. Some colour seems to be seeping back into that ashen and repugnant flesh.

`The breeze is magnificent. It's bracing - not cold, but soft and refreshing nonetheless. And the air, the air... it's not the city air, it doesn't stink of burnt gases, coals, fuels. This is an air of hope... an air of what once was perhaps a hundred years ago, from before the spoiling of the lands by the cancer of man.'

Drawing himself up slowly, clutching at the aged and creaking banister, he props himself up against the wall in a part-standing, part-crouching posture, all the while continuing seamlessly with his deeply stoned diatribe.

`I feel strong, I feel secure. I'm alone, but up here I'm not lonely. I have my thoughts, I have my words, and I have the music going around in my head to protect me. This is a place where, unlike all others, I know that I won't go insane. And it is that clarity for which I am grateful. It is for this moment that I am respectful. And it is for the future that I'm hopeful. But until then, the present will do me just fine. All problems left well below, all worries cast asunder. The trappings of wealth... or the trappings - full stop - they're not here, nor would they ever seek to follow me to this place, because they can't understand what this place is... they can look at it, but they can't see it... they can listen to it, but they can't hear it... and they may taste it, but they cannot, will not truly savour it. And so, in some small way, I'm safe from the real world. Or perhaps that world that I'm so accustomed to is the dream, and a nightmare of mediocrity at that, and it is the oh so rare occasion when I get up here onto the mountaintop, that is the time that sees me awaken... to wake up and take a good, long, hard look at myself, at the world below, at the sky above, the future beyond, and the past now hence.'

In a wobbly, inebriated dance of the dead, Zachery begins to stagger tentatively within the confined space of the landing in between the stair flights. He hobbles hesitantly, as if trying out a new pair of legs of which he was unsure of the fit. His speech clearing, his enunciation gaining clarity, and his wavering accents from American to Eastern-European finding some edge. The flow of consciousness continues unabated.

`Here I stand, brush in hand, looking out upon the land sprawling below, upon the picture perfect canopy sky above, and a stretchingly distant horizon... so far yet so close. The chill bites my hands, the cold slows my blood, the slowed blood makes me numb, and I feel nothing... perfect! I don't feel pain, I don't feel warm, I don't feel misunderstood. I look out into the ether as I brush my easel, realising... yes, that's a blue. A blue I can mix together. That's a green that I can somehow mush up and re-create. That there is a grey that can surely be adorned upon my palette. But the sun - the sunset... that's an orange? A gold? A fire-white? A crimson? ... a colour that I might never paint, for indeed it is a colour, but at the same time so much more! I could no sooner paint such a colour as I might bleed it! It's the fire, it's the life - it's all we have left and all that ever will be. Unique yet familiar. Common yet divine. These simple colours may be easy to attain by some stretch of the imagination, but have you ever tried to imagine the sun? Well, you may try, but you shall never succeed. Because as soon as you gaze upon the reality, you'll realise about your flaccid, hollow, shallow attempts to recreate that which is irreplaceable... that which is unrecognisable, yet you would never mistake it for anything else.'

His steps are now firm and footsure, striding at his full height of six-foot-something, his stance is bolt upright, rigid and strong. His pupils have returned from the inner depths of his skull. His voice is now slow and deliberate. Drawing both hands down his face, fingernails leaving small scarlet streams down the length of his forehead. With resonant, powerful footfalls he begins to climb the stairs. Still he does not miss a beat in his words.

`You can't paint the wind, you can't paint the smell of the air. These are the things that breathe vibrant life into what would otherwise be a humble scene. How can one possibly imagine it? How can one possibly paint it? Is my task fruitless? I believe this to be so. Will I ever give it up? I think not. What is my purpose? I have no idea! And is this a problem? I care not... Never will I let the world think that it has had the better of me! Never will I lend humanity the concept that I have given up. Never will mankind believe that it has me beaten!'

Having reached the top of the stairs, he turns to look back, staring deep into thin air, gesturing wildly, and shouting as if addressing his friends, Romans, and countrymen

`I will live forever, or I will die trying!!! The fight must go on... the fight will go on...'

And with the grandest of sweeping gestures, Zachery Schneider - a proudly imperious and intimidating creature that bears absolutely no resemblance to the defeated figure I had mistaken for a corpse not five minutes ago - strides into his apartment, slamming the door behind him with a booming echo.

All the while I have been transfixed by the transformation that has taken place before my own eyes. It was a regeneration that took place to his body in this world as his mind escaped to another. Renee Descartes would have loved this!

How did this come to him? Was this a memory? A vision? A dream? A premonition? Had I just been in the presence of some ethereal epiphany? I cannot tell. The one thing that no longer surprises me about Schneider is the perpetual continuity of his capacity to surprise...

A bomb is only a bomb until it goes off... then it really becomes a problem!