August 22, 2005
The varying results of killing yourself (Or: Blood on the Tracks)
Hunter S. Tompson's wishes were made true last night. He took his life at his typewriter earlier this year, and last night his cremated remains were shot from a canon in his hometown of aspen colorado with a carnival procession of fireworks and spectators.
And today, right about while we were eating beef barbecue sandwiches for lunch, another man went his in own way, in our backyard.
I owed Zach a lunch. when we returned, the aluminum from the Amtrak Coaster sat still and shone in the sun like a replaceable backdrop to our house as if it were set on a stage. Sometimes, i think it is.
The refrigerator fan from the diner car was humming and the dust was settling directly over the backyard fence. Zach and i sat on the fence and surveyed the scene. 40 yards down the track the engine sat still. Halfway between us and the engine, the conductor was covering up the body with blue blankets.
It took two blankets. They were about 3 feet apart.
Across the top row of train windows the passengers sat still and looking blankly out at us as they ate their hot dogs and pizza. Patient mothers and impatient children sat unknowingly at the tables chewed their food and looked out at us with puzzled faces. Below the windows just down the track, the coroners were photographing the body as it lay on the rocks under separate blankets.
A woman opened he diner car door window and looked down at the police gathering around the blue blankets. She looked back at me and shouted over the fans.
"Where are we?" she asked as she pointed to the set on the stage.
"Ventura." I replied.
"It will take a while for them to pick everything up", she said.
She sat there for a few more minuets, the she closed the window again.
Later this evening, as i rode my back back from the ocean, i cut through the fields and past the dark spot on the tracks where the blue blankets had been earlier.
I stopped and looked down the wet rocks and red rails. The blankets were gone. all but the very smallest pieces were picked up. the lady in the diner car door, and the people looking blankly out there windows were all gone too.
The sun was shining and the dusty evening wind was blowing across the strawberry fields. I stood there alone, exactly where someone was earlier. All that was left of them had ran down between the rocks and was drying in the sun.
I guess we all like to think that when we go it will be something like a big blast of light echoing from the boom of cannon on the mountain. And everyone will take notice. Everyone will watch. Everyone will remember.
But sometimes, the remains just get put in plastic bags by men in yellow coats who work the weekend shift, and what is left just soaks into the dirt. Sometimes, it is just a slight delay in the timetable, some odd stop in some arbitrary town, or a forgettable pause in the scenery scrolling by outside the window at lunch.
Also read: What else the railroad has taught me.