Vrijdag - 26 Nov.
I just read the Courier, tattered and filthy though it was. Mijn Got! I should go jump off the Golden Gate this instant & have done with it. Finish what I started and leave that final mystery to posterity. I don't know why I'm surprised by what I read. It's much as we had planned - it's what had to be to protect the others and the Legacy itself, and yet I don't know what to think. Perhaps it's seeing it in print with my photo looking like Caravaggio's sketch of Mephistopheles. Suddenly it's all real. It's like I've been living in some other realm the past few days - floating in a netherworld of mist, confusion, & self-delusion.
But what of the black hole in my own mind. I should not be here. How could I have been denied my oblivion? Oh, Christ! I don't want to think at all. I just want to go to sleep & have it be forever, or awaken in my own bed & have it all have been a nightmarish chimera.
I'll rise, pull the drapes open on a magnificent morning, perform my ablutions, & walk downstairs. Nick, Alex, & I will discuss the day's caseload and schedule over breakfast, then I'll read the paper, which will be full of nothing but totally ordinary news. Afterwards, I'll take a walk around the gardens, and spend the day working on Legacy reports & Luna finances. In the evening, it will be a pleasant supper of one of Dominick's specialties - baked snapper with oyster stuffing (Food. I'm becoming obsessed with food.), then a game or 2 of billiards or an hour at the piano, and finally, a new, interesting case as bedtime reading.
Did that life ever exist? Or was it some sort of deranged fantasy to escape this hellish world? Maybe this is my lot in life & always has been, and that is some fantasy or alcohol induced hallucination my mind creates in order to cope with it all. Do I dare trust my own memories? The paper is here in my hands, but what if that too is part of the delusion? What if it's merely another article about Silicon Valley? How else to explain the paradox?
How did I survive? Why? I had every intention of dying. For the plan to succeed, I had to die. There is no logical way under God's creation that I could have survived. Stop it brain! What is it Rachel tells Kat? Time out! If I don't do something, I'll go mad. I'm not that far from it now. Or am I already there?
What was it that the old lama told me? We had risked crossing into Tibet illegally, following a rumoured Yeti sighting. The Chinese caught us & tossed us in jail in Gyangtse.
It was so cold the water bowl & the waste bucket in the cell had frozen, yet there sat that little, old man, in nothing more than his plain, homespun, monk's robe. Fortunately, besides his native tongue, he spoke both English and Mandarin, which Samuel also spoke. He said that to endure the travails of the body one must turn one's mind, one's consciousness, inward to seek the center of the universe within ourselves. It is a quiet place the size of a mustard seed, but with the vastness of an ocean. If one finds that place, the body can endure anything.
However, when the mind itself is in such chaos that it has lost it's way & cannot find the path to the center, then one must focus upon the mundane to give the spirit a chance to seek its way alone without interference from the conscious mind.
From youth, I had studied the various philosophies & forms of meditation in an attempt to discipline my "gift", to make it a useful tool that could be called upon when needed - so that it could be trusted. Nevertheless, I did not truly understand what he meant. We talked for hours. Finally, he began to give me concrete examples - the intense concentration on the simple actions and details of the Japanese tea ceremony - ritualized simplicity; the focus of a scribe upon his calligraphy; the way a brass worker might polish his creation in circle after circle after circle for hours; or a woman might ground her grain to prepare her family's meal. The conscious mind itself becomes the simple, mundane action & frees the spirit to seek its way in calm clarity.
How do I do this here & now? I have no mundane chores to perform - nothing to do but sit in raging, confused turmoil that will allow no calmness, no clarity. I certainly don't think I shall scrub these floors as badly as they might need it. All I have is my pencil & this tablet. Perhaps I continue to do what I am doing - what I have always done - reason my way through the maze on paper, but revert to the mundane when I must, which is now. For the moment, I must simply play the reporter, not the philosopher.
XXX
Xena's gone out in search of Carmen. Please, dear God, let her be safe - she's but a child. I've given Xena $50 & sent her on a mission of my own as well. I hope it goes on what it's supposed to be for & not to feed her habit.
I need clothes & shoes that fit, a toothbrush, more bandages & ointment for my neck, and to find out what name I'm registered under & if I'm paid up for the room. I told her to find me a hat too - something to cover this peeling, stubbled mess. I wonder if it's going to come in all grey - I've seen it happen from fright or from a shock. A bullet parted Old Jack Ragoneaux's hair when he was precept in Dakar. The next morning, he had a white stripe down the center of his head, just like a skunk. I hope that there's not been sufficient damage to give me permanent bald patches. When I look in the mirror I see something like what I've fought my entire life - damned near a demon. Down vanity! Be glad that Charlie says only your neck is likely to bear a burn scar. It will simply take time. I'm a patient man, I'll wait.
It's odd. Never before had I realized how important it is to the human psyche to have possessions. In a way, it is our identity. When I awoke here, all that was left to me of my former existence was my watch and that safe deposit key - I recognized nothing else as my own. It's a very disconcerting feeling to be without the familiar. I now understand why the homeless cling so tenaciously to their shopping carts and the useless junk they call "their things". No matter how useless, those "things" represent the security of the familiar, and themselves to themselves. How devastating it must be to watch the garbage collectors and police sweep a neighborhood and see "their things" go into the truck to be deposited in some faraway, unknown dump - it is as though they too have been thrown into the dump.
Poor Nick & Alex. They're in the same boat. Ten times a day I place my hand on the door knob, thinking that I will walk out that door, go to the phone down the hall, and call Rachel's, but I can't. My logic, my gut, & my fear all say no. Did anything of theirs survive? Although I'd found ways to save a few special items, to my shame, I know that I'd not have been able to warn them.
I remember putting the Vermeer in the safe. I think I had hope of saving it for Mother. She gave it to me so that I'd never forget home. I wanted her to have it back in remembrance of me. Did I try to save anything else there at the end? It's so fragmented. So much gone - everything's gone. My piano, my music. My journals and Papa's pen. The photos by my bed. The library. The vaults. All gone - all that was Derek Rayne, and the Raynes that came before. There is no word for what I feel - an abyss of despair.
The Vermeer! That must have been when I picked up the key I found in my pocket, but how did it get into the pocket of these pants? Do not think about it, it will come in its own time.
Back to the task at hand - all this leaves me only $128.73. What then? Somehow I must be innocuous enough make it to one of my caches. Long ago, even before Horton, I realised that there might come a time when I'd have to step beyond the Pale - do something where the Legacy could not protect me, or do something that would make even the Legacy itself my enemy. I must be ordinary enough to be able to walk into the bank with that key & sign firmly. No muss, no fuss. Just one of hundreds of faceless customers on a boring day. Or I must make it back onto the island, my last option, I fear. It will be crawling with security & investigators for a long time to come - not to mention the Harbor Patrol's watchful attention.
If Xena accomplishes her mission, perhaps I shall venture out in a night or 2. I need to find a library that's open late. Before I go to pieces in chaos & panic, I need to read the Chronicle, the Mercury, the Tribune, & the LA Times. Perhapse something will jog my memory or validate my reality. Because my hearing fluctuates so badly, I cannot depend upon what I hear on the radio - I miss too much - & I certainly cannot rely on what the Courier says.
It has always been on the far edge of legitimate journalism. Too much opinion for my tastes, & speculation expertly woven in with the real facts. Smithee has always been one of the worst, or best, about that. He's never had any love for me or Luna or anything that bespoke of money. He's a leftover Berkeley radical who distrusts all power & wealth. He'd have made a good anarchist. It's laughable, but I doubt he writes anything without being paid for it & paid very well. However, I must admit that if one sifts through the aspersions and the "power-to-the-people" slant, he's always been a good reporter. What facts he has are usually correct & he has a good nose for the truth at the bottom of a story. God knows I've had to send him chasing his tail a few times. It's just that he's so damned good at twisting the facts to suit his needs, which are publicity & to sell more papers.
Someone's back across the hall. More later.
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