The Hollow Man

Every day, across the entire face of our planet, millions of letters are sent. Though their popularity has begun to dwindle the simple pen and paper approach to communication is still widely used, either by those unable to make use of other technologies or by those who find small pleasures in the physical touch of a signed page in their own script.

Most letters are adressed to a recipient, and if delivery is impossible they are returned to their senders quickly and without worry by the postal service, however there are minor oddities present: If, for example, somebody writes a letter addressed to the post office, with no postage paid and no return address, where is it to be taken? Has it not, in fact, reached its intended destination? In all post offices there is a small box, filled with oddities which for whatever reason were found too interesting to be thrown away. These letters are rarely opened, and often their senders come by to enquire about them and have them returned. More often, however, they sit in the dark for months which turn to years as paper turns to dust and stamps slowly fade. This letter, below, is one of these "found" letters: I have no fear as to angering it's author, as it was obviously written for the purpose of being read by anyone who had the time to read it. 

     To you, the reader


    You do not know me, and I do not know you. Even if we do, by some strange twist of the fates share ties of life I can confidently say you have never known me, and I in turn have never known you. I write this letter because I am tired of living as a soul unspoken, and wish that sometime before I die at least one soul upon this earth, even a soul I have never known, will know me as I know myself. Whoever you are then, you curious reader, I thank you for taking the time to wonder, and beg you will read on as I tell you the tragedy of my hollow heart.

I am, to most appearances, a contented man. I am married, and have two children to my family name. I have worked hard my entire life to provide for myself and the people who share my life, and this work has born me generous fruits. I have a beautiful wife, and it would be difficult to find a prouder father than I in this world. I am, you would think, thouroughly normal. Ordinary, in perhaps the best possible sense. I tell you now, however, that that anyone who has ever thought this of me was wrong, because I know my own heart, and open it to you now: At my core, below my pride and apparent content, I am a hollow man. An empty man. I am, in fact, not a man at all: I am a shadow of life.

I am not mentally ill, my friend. I have emotions, and feel empathy, and as such I am not living in the cold shadow of psychopathy. No, my problem is far more basic than this: Below my emotions, beneath my feelings, I look and find myself absent. Below the daily thoughts I think is an absence where the bedrock of self should lie: The foundations of self and soul are missing, leaving an empty place at the heart of my heart. There is a hole, there, where I know I should be.

Perhaps my message appears depressing, or nihalistic. I do not believe that our world is so. I have met shining people, and even married one, people who so obviously are whole and complete, so gifted with self that they radiate outwards, and make the world shine with their presence.  Our world is one full of beautiful things, and miraculous sights and sounds.

But I can't see them. I can't feel them. I only know their reflections, in the burn of standing close to the radiant sun of another shining soul. I wear my ragtag heart with a shallow kind of sadness, knowing the joys of others inside but never experencing them for myself: The curse of the man in the mirror who exists only as a flatter reflection of whoever gazes in, imperminent, fleeting.

My wife loves me, and my children love me. I hug them, and kiss them, and make love to my wife while she holds me and whispers to me how deep her feelings for me run. In the dm reflection of her love, I can whiper that I love her back, and believe it while her love shines with me. But the moment she turns away, the moment her eyes leave me and her mouth closes, the moment we no longer touch, I am hollow once more. I am not an actor, and I do feel love in the shadow of those who love me: I am something far less than a pretender, as I simply ceace to exist when I am alone. I am a reflection, a shadow: In the presence of another soul, a soul shines dimly back. In their absence, the hollow man stands alone.

I do not believe my condition is singular. Cold, empty reason tells me that there must be others like me, who face the day in the eyes of others, men who do not cry unless others give them tears, and only laugh in the dark shadow of another's joy. Perhaps you, my reader, share my condition.  If we were to meet, perhaps we would recognize each other's conditions and perhaps share in the silence together. It is not important to me. Nothing is, unless another person tells me it must be so. In any case, if you do not share my particular curiosity of mind I do not expect you to understand me, or believe me anything more than a joke or a work of fiction penned for for my enjoyment. I only wish you were right. At the very least, I would ask you to do one thing for me, regardless of weither or not you truely believe I am real.

Look around you, wherever you are. Perhaps you are a postal attendant, standing in a crowded post office stamping parcels for milling customers. Perhaps you're sitting on a bus, or eating dinner, or sitting in bed on a Sunday evening. Regardless of where you are, look at another person. Ask them how they are, how they are feeling, if they are having a nice day. Look at them, really look at them as they answer. Look into their eyes, without breaking contact while they speak.

Now, convince yourself that they are whole. Tell yourself that their mind thinks, and their soul breathe with life into their days. Dismiss the voice in the back of your mind, the voice which wonders if you are alone, truley alone and surrounded by reflections of what you give to the world around you. The voice is surely meaningless. A whisper based on nothing. Hollow.

So good day my friend, my only friend. To you I have revealed nothing of myself, except the nothing which is my all. Consider it a gift from a man who has nothing to give. It is all I am, nothing more- I could not possibly give you less.

Kind regards,
O



I wonder, sometimes, if this letter is a joke. I know not the heart, but the words of men, and the secrets they reveal are as deep as the lines the ink cuts into the paper they write on. I wonder, though, that there was no name attached, only a circle drawn below the letter. To not sign the letterd be the mark of anonymity, to hide a name from the world. A circle, a surface without a core, is more than that. It is a calling card, a mark shaped by identity and purpose. I can say no more on this letter, except that I believe that more than most of the items in my collection it belongs in the public eye. What better place than the scrutiny of anonymity to reveal the face behind the mask is but a mirror? If the nameless are to be judged, it is destined to be among the faceless.
For what does a soul without a face see when they look into a mirror but nothing?

I will wonder no more. Words, not hearts, fill my collection. Truth or lie, words are a window onto the mind behind the mask. I judge minds, not hearts, and my hollow friend's mind has earned his place upon my shelf.

The Silent Lane

I once again find myself returning to the darker area of my shelf to withdraw an account of an event in my own life, some years ago. The events it details are strange, and I cannot adequetly explain them even today. I will allow, for now, the dusty penmarks of a man writing twenty two years ago to recount this tale, a story I have come to remember well in the years that separate me from it.

"Tonight, I arrived home fearful of the world outside my doors. I went to my cellar and poured a glass of something I hoped wouuld make the world seem more secure but did nothing to relieve my anxieties. This page is my final port of safety: childish, I suppose, to pour out my demons onto a page; I am not so foolish as to believe they will be exorcised from my mind in recollection. No, I do not believe that recording an event makes it lesser, or removes the weight it places upon the mind. What I know is that if I can record the events, put them in a place that is not my mind and close the book behind them, they can become written facts, easier to accept than the fearful words I want to scream to the wind and rain. I cannot put my demons to rest, but I can give them a name, and reduce my fear through knowing them.
I ramble, but only to delay a task I know I must begin. Only through the rational can fear be fought, and fight it I must if I wish to continue my task. The Collection is important, and must continue. This evening, I was in the nearby township, collecting a small sum of money from the bank to meet this months financial concerns. Money has not been an issue for me, and will not be as long as I continue to collect, but I digress from my recollection. I mention it only because it was in the town that the events of my story took place. After leaving the bank, I turned onto the main street and begun the walk to my home, as the sun begun to set in the sky. It was as I was walking aling the main road that I noticed the low level of activity in the street. It is and was a Saturday, and the street was a popular one, with two of the local taverns located upon it. The road was completely bare of travellers, and I was one of only several people left on the path. It struck me as strange, but I continued up the long street and turned down onto the next.
I am not a man of great pace and as I rounded the corner the sun was making its way below the hills. Darkness was beginning  to decend over the streets, but not one light was on in any window. The street lamps, usually the first lights lit, were this evening absent. My spine prickled, and a voice I would come to know well begun to whisper well in the back of my mind, but my own nature led me to ignore them. A power outage, I reasoned to myself, nothing more. Nonetheless I walked faster, reaching the edge of the village before the sky grew much darker. Climbing the hill outside the village I wished nothing more than to get home as quickly as possible, and perhaps enquire tomorrow about power outages in the area. Nonetheless, as I crested the hill I turned to look back at the town behind me, which by this time should have glowed with light and colour.
In the dark, I could not even make out the buildings. Not a light, not a sound echoed up out of the town, now overshadowed by the darkness of the fast approaching winter night.Early in the morning as I had walked down into the town, the sounds of a city waking up had sounded from below me: Now, just a few hours later, there may as well have been no town at all. I was afraid, and I still am afraid, and I turned and ran from the dead vilage, fearful of the spreading dark. The country lane was not lit, and I ran in the dark, fearful of the noise I made as my old feet touched the ground.
I tired quickly, not being as physically capable as I once was, and walked with haste for my home.It was not far, and I begun to find a sort of comfort in the sound of each step taking me away from the village that had lost its light.Each step was a small sound of sanity, a reminder that noise and light could prevail, even as the dark and silent vilage hung in my mind.

And then it was quiet.

Nothing changed: The night was still dark, the lane stil just visible in the dark, my feet still moving along the path. Nothing had changed, except that my footsteps were silent. My breathing was silent. I could hear nothing, nothing at all in a silent lane.

I cried out, from fear and my desperate need to hear something, anything. Nothing: no noise echoed from the trees and the hills around me. I felt my heart beating soundlessly in my ears and I screamed again. Alone, confused and suddenly deaf to the world: Fear does not describe what I felt, screaming souundlessly into nothing, and knowing nothing would save me. I found strength in my legs, and ran. I ran for my home, screaming to the wind that I felt without hearing and the dirt below me I could feel my feet hitting without the noise I never knew I would miss.
I cannot remember when sound returned: I only remember falling to the ground and sobbing with happiness when it did. I don't know how long I ran in silence, but when I finally stood I was outside my home. I went inside, hands shaking and sat down in my favourite chair. I took this notepad from my pocket, and started to write. I have told my story, here by the dull electric light of my living room, and it has not helped me accept or forget. I can only hope that when I shut this book, and put it on my shelf, and walked away from it, I will be able to accept it and move on. I very much doubt will."

It's been years since I put that notebook on a shelf at the back of my livingroom, but I doubt a day has gone by where I did not think about the events it details. It was a week before I returned to the town: The lights were on, the people were out and about, buskers played music and children argued loudly on the streetcorner. I wonder about that place now: About the people who hurried for cover that night, about the lights that vanished from the streets and the silent homes which should have echoed with laughter. Long ago, I doubted I could ever forget the silent that decended over the world: Today, with years of life behind me, I know I never will.

Under the Autumn Tree

Weeks of writing about friends passed and dreamtime forests will have convinced some that my tastes are decidedly maudlin. While it is not untrue that much of my collection is concerned with rather dark and disturbing texts, it is only because this style of text lends itself to my particular area of collection. Compare, if you will, a coin collector: If a large number of his coins are dirtied and old, it is only because so often all that remains of a shining golden history is a few blackened circles from years gone by. This piece is a new one, and as such both common and shining. It is as relevant to my collection as any sum of treasured horrors.

Under the Autumn Trees

By T

"For Elizabeth"

We sat, we two, beneath the trees
And treasured us that day.
The midday sun turned into dusk,
And stole the heat of May.
All around us fattened bees,
Purchased on dying flowers,
And in her arms the twilight minutes,
Transformed to twilight hours.

The crisp brown leaves fall all around,
Twirling slowly in the breeze.
The sun dies brilliant, shining, bright,
And sets our hearts at ease.
A leaf alights upon the ground,
To rest in ochre light.
Another falls now through the sky,
Twisting with delight.

The sun goes down below the hill,
To rise again tomorrow.
She sleeps, an angel on my shoulder,
To take away my sorrow.
I give myself this moment still,
A taste of longed for bliss.
I rest my eyes, and ask myself,
What could compare to this?

Love is a wonderful thing, so much more powerful than fear or hate. Only in love can happiness be seized, and only in love wrenched away can fear wield any power. The author of this particular piece requested his name was not mentioned, and perhaps we can see why: Love is always a public secret, one which everyone can see but very rarely understood. I do not believe that naming the author could allow even one person to understand, truly, the depth of love the author felt. To put a name to the lover is to rob him of the personal, to turn his love into something shallowly shared by all. Better to allow him his privacy, to let his love be his own, but allow his words to be read and understood by all.

My collection is filled with thorns, so often obscuring the sunlight. I can only look with love upon the few roses the thorns bring with them, and try to protect them from the spikes that surround them.

Angry Dreaming

Towards the end of his life, Makeson was increasingly disturbed. He took to extensive medication to hold off conventional sleep as long as possible and resorting to only the smallest possible periods of sleep to tide him over between days of chemically induced awareness. Even in his final days, he could not escape his dreams. One month ago, two nights before his death, he recounted to me the story of his final dream. 

“I dreamed of waking once again, but my forest was gone. The tree stump, do you remember that? It was still there, but it was completely bare. The entire history of my life scrubbed clean. I can’t even remember the names that should have been carved there, now. Then it all moved, you know how dreams go, you accept it at the time. But it was wrong, so wrong. The world was angry, and red. I knew it would be, it always is when I go back there. That’s why I never sleep, shouldn’t, can’t…”

He stopped talking, and drifted off. Then, he caught himself and sat up, terrified, and talked faster.

“It wasn’t my place. I didn’t belong in my own mind anymore, it was just…red. Everything was so red, so bitter and wrong, that I actually screamed to wake up. But I couldn’t, it wasn’t my choice. I was in that red for less than a second before it collapsed into nothing and I fell. 

I fell through that angry dark for days. I hit the ground seconds later, and lay there for a moment. When I stood up a week later the world was cold, and blue, and worse than angry. The coldness cut me… Cut into me like a knife. I can still feel the cut Martha…

Martha was his wife, who died four years ago. I was afraid for my friend: He had completely lost touch with reality.

“The wind blew through me as I struggled to hold on. There was no snow or ice, just cliffs of stone surrounding me as I clung to life. The wind was whispering to me, “Lie down, sleep here, rest…” and I so wanted to, Martha, I was so tired. Even now that I’m awake I want to dream of sleeping. I want to-no, I have to keep… I didn’t sleep, I walked on and the wind was angry with me, so angry. It wanted me to fall, to die and be buried in stone and forgotten in my own mind. I couldn’t lose myself, I couldn’t lose…  I walked and walked until the voice was just wind and pain, and I couldn’t stand any more. I fell to my knees and cried, and the sky laughed with the wind at my struggle to survive. And the ground was gone again, and I fell into the waking world.

“I was awake, but the world was wrong, Martha. I’m cold, and I hurt, and I can still hear the voice on the wind. I remember things, strange things. I remember watching you die, and I remember dancing with you in my forest. I remember us growing old together, and I remember me driving through the night to the home of my only friend.

“I remember falling asleep, but I can’t remember waking up.”

My only friend cried quietly to himself, muttering the name of his dead wife to me through his sobs. I did the only thing I know to do: I collected his final dream with paper and ink. When I was finished, Makeson stopped crying, and smiled at me.

“Make it a good story, won’t you? I don’t think I have many more in me.”

Makeson drove home that night, and I did not hear from him again. I received a call from the hospital two days later. Makeson had been admitted to hospital for severe cut wounds sustained from a broken bottle of his own medication. The woman on the phone indicated they were self administered. I was told that he started screaming in his room several hours after being picked up, and was sedated to reduce his pain. An hour later, Makeson was dead.

I cannot pretend to be a doctor, and the trained professionals told me my friend had died had passed on peacefully in his sleep, a result of his old age. All I can offer is the whisper of doubt; the record of half remembered dreams from a man’s life, carried on the wind and weighed down with the cold fury of decades.

I know my friend died in his sleep. Regardless of how he died, I very much doubt it was peaceful. I can only remember him through a painting of words, which does him little justice. I will speak of my friend no longer. 

Those that sleep do rest at last, and cease to mourn the bitter past. I do not loiter, I show respect. I do not linger, I collect.

The Funeral

The cremation of Andrew Makeson was earlier in the week. The funeral director and I were the only attendants.

I have many stories to tell, so I will not dwell upon the newly dead. I have one more story to tell about Makeson, and I know it must be told before he can be put to rest. He was never one for sentementaility; neither am I. He lives on in his word, and it is my duty to recall him one final time.

The Dreamer

My friend was a dreamer at heart, and most of his writing stemmed from either his own dreams, or his waking daydreams of what could be so. As respected an academic as he was, he interested me most in his recollections of his night-time wanderings, even as the academic community enjoyed his less abstract works. Of these I have read little, and what I have read has failed to impress me in the way his dreams always did. Perhaps he wrote them for money, or fame, or academic recognition. I only know that it his dreams I recall him for, and his dreams I share with the world.

Last night I dreamed of waking once again, rising from the tired night to the place I now know so fondly. It was cold, but the chill did not bother me. The sky shone defiance to the wind, brighter than the waking sun could ever gleam, in a sky of golden white. The moment reminded me of how the world shines when a storm first passes, as the light breaks through the thickest clouds and sets the clouds aglow, sending the last of the cold and rain scurrying for the shadows that once prevailed. I thought all this and knew it was so, as I fell to the grass below me in delight.

But the cold wind still blew through the world, even in that moment of passing rain. I did not move but I was standing, then, and looking in the direction of the chill. The clouds there had not seen that brightest sun and cast the world of my imaginings below them into shadow. And as I looked back and saw myself lying in delight, I knew it could not last while the shadow lingered on the horizon. Then I was gone and back to myself, turning to face the wind where I knew I must be.

Then I was gone from the peaceful meadow, and in a place I knew far better. It was not as it is in the world I wake to, which is to say I know that my mind created this place, but still I know it better than any place I can reach by waking. I know it well, but I do not go there often now, as the skies above it are dark and grey.

It was my place, once. A place with trees and an old tree stump, where I could sit and be alone with my thoughts. The sky was never dark, but shone with me, sang along to the chords of my heart. It was a place where I was myself, the one and only place where I was me. It was a place I came to love, a place where I carved myself into the wood, the earth, and the sky, and called it my heart.

I walked there last night, in the darkness, and knew it was no longer my own. The stump which had once served as my resting place now covered in names, dates, words. “Lucy and Andy”, carved in a heart. “J +A” carved on a root. June 1976, a month which had carved itself in the heart of my heart. Looking at the sum of my broken heart, I yearned for the days when the stump was just a place to sit, before I chose to carve words across its wooden surface. Looking to the sky, I saw perhaps a hint of that shining sky through the clouds, and I wish, how I wish, that my heart was still my own.

So I sit, once again, In the heart of my mind, in a place that I could once be alone in. But it was not empty, this time. With the names came faces, and with the dates came times, and all through my forest there walked the shadows  of my life, each face carrying with them a piece of my heart, given away and never returned. But I do not dwell on these faces, and as I sit, I find I am alone once more with myself.

The stump is marked with names, but they did not worry me anymore. My heart has been hurt and healed, but still it heals. The sky is still dark, but that is not a problem. Sitting alone once again, I felt the hours pass by. The cold wind that had blown incessantly was finally still, and I smiled again. I remembered once again the first truth I had carved here, in the depths of my heart.

“We sit alone on the shores of our mind,
Lonely Islands of souls and dreams
waiting for the ship to take us to another shore”

And though my lonely forest is far from the ocean, and I have never found a foreign shore that I could call home, I can wait for the day that I can walk the pathways of my lonely forest with another.

 Andrew was a talented writer, but his dreams are what interested me most about him. The clearing in the forest was a common element of his dreams throughout his life, a place he called his own but yearned to call another’s. This dream was one of the first he ever recounted to me, and it has continued to fascinate me in the detail it carries ever since. An almost conscious dreamer, Andrews mind dwelled on his life, and his brief forays into idyllic dreadfulness always give way to his struggle with loneliness, his troubled experiences with love, and his attempts to accept the changing world he lived in. As he said to me, long ago, “We are lost, almost all our lives. The moments when we find ourselves, those are the moments when we truly live.”

There is much more to be said on Andrew Makeson’s life, and I will continue to let him say it. He is beyond the world now, but his words live on in my collection. Words are all that remain of him, and it is these words I must live for.

Sad News

I would like to believe that my records are unaffected by the events of my own life, however it is with no little sadness that I must comment on the passing of my colleague, Doctor Andrew Makeson

Makeson was among the very short list of people I have considered a colleague and friend, and he has been one of the few to never suggest I turn from my duty. Indeed, among the many pages I have collected, entire shelves have been penned by him. His mind had begun to slip away in his later years, but he never stopped writing, perhaps understanding even in his fragile sate just how important the power of he written word can be. Before me sits his final works, and they will be added to the collection. I have decided to mark his passing by honoring his works here, however I cannot possibly demonstrate in so few words the weight of the many he leaves as a legacy.

I will grieve. The collector will collect. On myself, I will speak no more. On my friend, I will speak volumes, when I have found the pieces that do him the respect he deserves.