The Hermit

The Hermit

By

Phoenix Hocking

 

My dearest Katherine,

I no longer know what day it is.  I spent many days in a raging fever, half out of my mind, battling enemies that did not exist, hallucinating, deathly afraid of both fire and water.

But the fever has broken, and I am alive.  My name is John Hammond, and I am alive.

I would say Praise God for that, but I am not so sure that being alive is much better than being dead at this point.

Let me just say that life on this tiny atoll is not exactly Gilligan’s Island.  You remember the television show, yes?  Seven people set sail and were cast adrift on an island.  They built cozy huts, had fun adventures, and were eventually rescued, I believe.  I wish I had the Professor’s wits right about now!

Well, that place is not here.  The only thing that is remotely like Gilligan’s island is that I managed to stumble across this hut, so at least I am somewhat protected from the elements, and the wild creatures that roam at night.

There must have been someone living here at some time or other, though who and when is far beyond my knowledge.  Still, I am grateful for the hut, and even more grateful that hidden away I found paper and pencils.

Pencils!  My God!  Who ever would have thought I’d be happy to see a pencil?  I, whose life consisted of computers and cell phones and ballpoint pens if ever I had to actually write anything down, am reduced to writing with a pencil.  How the mighty have fallen.  I shall be forever grateful to Mr. Hadley, who once showed me how to sharpen a pencil with a pocket knife when I was ten years old.  That, of course, was a lifetime ago.

Still, here I am, and since I seem to have my wits about me, at least for now, I thought I would spend at least part of my time writing to you.  You will never see these words, of course, for I am resigned that I shall die here, and only the wild cats will find my body, and reduce me to bones.

I wish I could tell you exactly how I came to be here, but my memory seems to have been lost in the storm.  I remember the rain, and the panicky feeling of drowning, but beyond that, there is not much else.  I am not even sure how many were with me.

But you.  You, I remember.

Oh, Katherine!  My beloved!  My one and only love!  I wish…oh, how I wish I had told you before I left how I felt.  Now, you will never know.  You will never know how I once followed you with my eyes whenever you came into the office, or how often I passed by your apartment building to look up at your window.  You were everything to me, and you never knew.

Well, I tell you now!  Now that you cannot reject me, or call me a fool, or tell me that I am not good enough for you.  I love you!

There.  I’ve said it.  Out loud, too.  Only the birds heard me, of course, but still.  I said it.

It is a beautiful day today.  I spent much of my time walking on the beach, gathering driftwood for my fire.  It gets cool here in the evenings, and it keeps the big cats away, so gathering wood is a daily necessity.

I’ve never been a hunter or fisherman, so I subsist on what I can forage.  Luckily, the island has fruit trees, and palms, and coconuts, so I will not starve.  It would be nice to have steak, or chicken, or fish, but I have no skill in catching such a creature, and wouldn’t know what to do with it even if I summoned up the courage to kill it.  But still…I survive.

I do know to boil my water before drinking it.  Even I, who has never camped a day in his life, know that much.

I think a lot.  I think about what life with you might have been like.  I think about television and movies and dances.  I even think about my job!  Yes, the job I hated with every breath it took from me has somehow passed from intense loathing to a wistful wishing I was there again.

The hut was a Godsend.  I literally stumbled across it as I was searching for others who might be here.  I was so excited to see a structure!  People!  There must be people here!

But, no.  There is no one here but me.

The hut is quite comfortable.  It is built sound, with a view of the sea to the front, and the forest to the back.  At night, I can hear the cats prowl, but they do not bother me during the day.   The hut consists of one single room, but quaintly furnished, with a real bed, and a quilt someone must have made before they left the place.  I spend much of my time sitting at the window, watching the birds and the sea, wondering if anyone will come to rescue me.

But I gave that up long ago.  No one is coming.  There will be no rescue.  Not for me.

But night is falling, and I can hear the cats beginning their evening prowl.  Sometimes, it almost seems as if they speak to me, in words I can understand.  But I know I am only hallucinating again.

So, good night, Katherine.  I love you.  I shall hide this paper and the pencil, lest one of the cats find it and destroy it.

-*-*-

“Katherine!  I’m happy to see that you were on today.”  Sister Evangeline said as she entered the ward.  “How are our patients doing?”

Katherine unpinned her nurse’s cap and shook out her hair.  “They’re all fine.  Mrs. O’Leary was calm, for a change.  And Mr. Hammond just sat in his room and wrote much of the day.  Sometimes I wonder what he writes about.”

“Poor old duck,” Sister Evangeline said.  “It must be especially hard for a writer to lose his mind.  No telling what goes on in that brain of his.”

Katherine slipped on her rain coat.  “Is he still in love with me?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” Sister Evangeline answered.  “Except now he’s pretty sure he will die on his island without ever having told you.”

The nurse shook her head.  “Poor old thing,” she echoed.  “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.  Have a good evening.”

Before and After

Before and After

By

Phoenix Hocking

 

Yes, Your Honor.  I believe I would like to make a statement, if the court will indulge me a little.  This is, after all, my life on the line, so I want that you should understand what brings me to this place.

It seems to me that the lives of men and women are divided into two parts – Before, and After.

Before the war, and after.  Before I got married, and after.  Before I graduated from college, and after.   Before I had children, and after.  Before I retired…well, you see where I am going with this.  In my case, it was Before I went to sleep, and After.

Before I went to sleep that fateful night, I was a relatively successful businessman.  I lived a respectable life in a quiet neighborhood, with a perfectly fine wife and three ordinary children.  After I woke up, I was a murderer.

I am an accountant, you see, and at the time of this…I don’t know what to call it.  Tragedy?  Occurrence?  Happening?  Murder?  Well, in any case, it was tax season, and I’d been working all the hours the good Lord sent me.  I was over-tired, I’ll admit to that.

Now, some people, God bless them, are quite organized.  Their books are in order, the receipts clearly labeled, and any information I need in their proper place.  Those returns I can whip out in no time at all.  They are, quite frankly, a joy to prepare, even though I don’t make much money from them.  I get paid by the hour, you see.

And then, there was Mr. Whitcomb.

Short, balding, middle-aged, with a turkey waddle of a neck and piggy-eyes, Mr. Whitcomb seemed to suck up all the air in my office.

He strode in, clutching two large paper grocery bags, bulging at the top with receipts.  “Nice to meet you, old boy,” he bellowed, and the force of his garlic breath actually made me lean back in my chair.  He dropped the bags on my desk.  “See what you can do with this mess, eh, old boy?” he said.  “Your girl’s got my phone number.”

Then he turned around and walked out of my office, trailing the scent of his lunch behind him.

I confess that I was stunned.  I got up to go after him, but he was already out the door.

“Who on earth was that?” I asked my secretary.

She looked down at the note on her desk.  “Mr. Henry Whitcomb,” she answered, shaking her head a little.  “Not a very nice man.”

“Indeed.”

I returned to my office to work, removed the paper bags from my desk, and put them on a side chair.  I continued to work on a perfectly straight-forward tax return.

But the paper bags seemed to speak to me from the chair, their chaos a chorus of pleas to Help Me!  And so, with a sigh, I finished the easy return, and focused my attention on the bags.

“Mrs. Jolly,” I called.  “Could you please bring me Mr. Whitcomb’s information please?”

My good secretary entered the office, holding a slip of paper between two fingers.  “This is all he gave me, Mr. Williams,” she answered.  “Just his name, address, social security number, and phone number.  He said the rest was in the bags.”

She handed me the paper as if she were handing over a dead sea slug.  She shivered a little.  “I didn’t like him very much,” she said.

I smiled.  “That’s okay.  I didn’t either.”

I turned my attention to the contents of the paper bags.  My God!  The man must have been insane!  It seemed to me as if he kept every single receipt he ever got, as if his daily latte, or the supplies for a birthday party were tax deductible.  Rarely were there notes on the receipts as to what the receipt was for, and only sometimes was the date clear enough to read.  If the contents of the paper bags were a building, it would have been a madhouse.

I was already tired.  Tax season is stressful all by itself, and the long hours sitting in a chair can take its toll on a person.

Even though, as I said, I get paid by the hour, I knew this mess was going to take many hours to clear up, and my own previous customers were going suffer for it.  The longer I worked on his receipts, the madder I got, so that by the time I got home, long after dark, I was in a foul mood.  I snapped at my wife, snarled at the children, ate a meager dinner, and had a couple glasses of wine.

And Before I went to bed, I took a sleeping pill.

Now, I should probably say that this was not a regular occurrence.  I don’t like taking medication.  And I especially don’t like taking this particular pill.  It often gave me strange dreams, and I’d been told that I sometimes walked or talked in my sleep after having taken it.

But, as I say, I was over-tired and stressed, and so I took the pill Before I went to sleep.

Oh, Your Honor!  My dreams were horrible.  Horrible!

I dreamed I went to the address written on the slip of paper.  I pounded on the door.  Mr. Whitcomb opened the door and I shoved the paper bags in his face, shouting all the while.  He was no match for my fury, and I stuffed those receipts into his mouth and down his throat.  I pummeled his chest until he went slack and simply lay on the floor, his eyes open and glazed.  I took the remaining receipts, showered his dead body with them, and then gently laid my business card on top, with a bill for my services.  Then I drove home.

After I got up, I was still a little groggy, but I performed my morning ablutions as usual.  I went down to breakfast and apologized to my wife, who kissed me on the top of my head and forgave me, as she always does when I’ve been unpleasant.

“Where did you go last night?” she asked when she settled at the table with her own cup of coffee.

“Go?”

“Yes,” she said.  “You went out for a while, and when you returned, you said, ‘well, that’s done,’ and went back to sleep.  I do wish you wouldn’t take those pills, darling.  One of these days you’re going to hurt yourself sleepwalking.”

I was arrested later that morning at my office.  Mr. Whitcomb’s body had been found by his housekeeper, covered in receipts, with the bill for my services on his chest.

So, you see, Your Honor.  I must have done it.  I don’t deny it.  But I do ask you this – if I didn’t KNOW I did it, am I still guilty?  If I was literally not in my right mind, but sound asleep at the time, am I still guilty?

Perhaps every After is also a Before.  Before I went to sleep, I was a simple accountant.  After I woke up, I was a murderer.  But now, my After has become Before the gallows.  And After the gallows, no one knows.

Friendship and Loss

Friendship and Loss

 

By

Phoenix Hocking

 

Friday, May 22, 2020  – I don’t even remember what day of the Coronavirus shutdown this is, except it seems like forever.

 

Of necessity, this is a very personal tale.  It has to be.

I am constantly amazed at how “fine” everybody seems to be.  No one will admit to feeling lonely, sad, scared, depressed, or abandoned.  It’s as though, if we admit to those things, they’ll actually be true, which of course, they are anyway.  But admitting to those feelings feels somehow like failure.  As if we’ve done something wrong, and why aren’t we full of all the positive messages we see on Facebook?  Pretty, happy, joyful messages of positivity and love seem only to slap our faces, and the shame of it all drives us farther and farther into our own circle of despair.

Have you felt like this?

You are not alone.

The Mental Health Coalition recently launched a movement with the hashtag #howareyoureally?  Hoping to give people a place to voice their true feelings, I thought perhaps I’d put the hashtag on my Facebook page.  I received exactly one response, with one word:  Fine.

Really?  Fine?  Well, bully for you.

Most of the time, I think I really am mostly fine.  Mostly okay.  Better off than most.  I am already retired, and living on Social Security, so I have no income to lose (so far).  I live alone, so I don’t have to worry about taking care of other people.  I get bi-weekly deliveries from the Food Bank, so I’m certainly not going to starve.  My Section 8 housing voucher has been renewed, so I’m not being forced out of my apartment.  I’m really in pretty good shape, considering.

But living alone has its drawbacks, too.  The isolation can feel crushing, and guilt at feeling crushed can sometimes be overwhelming.  How dare I feel crushed when I have it so much better than a lot of other people?  What is wrong with me?

And when my only real daily contact was with a friend who lives in another city, and has been suddenly cut off, the panic feels very real.

I’ve known my friend since 2008, when she became my dog trainer.  We became friends, and have kept in contact through many of life’s ups-and-downs.  Deaths and moves and politics and relationships – we talked about it all, usually several times a day.  We share the same views on many things, especially politics and current events.  We commiserated more than once over the idiocy of Trump, and shared equal wonderment at how anybody in his right mind could possibly support him.  When the pandemic came along, we continued to share the same amazement at people who weren’t taking this damn thing seriously.

We emailed each other several times a day.  It was almost like living in the same house.  I had a friend, a companion, a comrade-in-arms.

And then, it whimpered to a slow stream, then to a brutal stop.

Maybe its my own fault.

A few weeks ago, I was suffering from major Quarantine Fatigue.  I didn’t want to think about the news, I didn’t want to talk about the news, I didn’t want to HEAR about the news.  I just wanted to talk about our daily lives: which jigsaw puzzles we were working on, what our dogs were doing, our neighbors,  travel, dinner, how the latest recipe turned out, and whatever else happened to come up in our daily lives.

Now, to back-track a little, we had both backed away a few times in the past.  Especially when politics just got to be too much to talk about.   But we always started up again, and went right back to our several-times-a-day emailing.

Anyway, with my declaration that I didn’t want to talk about the news, she simply responded with, “Maybe that’s a good thing.  You shouldn’t focus on things that distress you.”

And, while she didn’t exactly disappear, the emails were suddenly limited to one or two a day, then just a “check-in” to make sure the other was alive.  We both live alone, and have a bit of a fear of dying alone and not being found until we start to stink.

She assured me that this wasn’t personal, and not to take her silence personally.  I tried to give her the space she wanted.  But any attempt at a “normal” email was ignored.  Then, I got some good news and wanted to share it with my friend.  So, I emailed her, and again, the email was ignored.  All I got from her was a check-in that said, “I lived another day.  Let’s see how you are today.”

Well, yeah.  I was hurt that she hadn’t acknowledged my good news, and I told her so.  I told her, “I’m alive, though a little miffed you didn’t respond to my news.  I’ll survive.  Just kind of makes me wonder about our friendship.”

Her response was so out of character, and so brutal, and hurtful, I could hardly believe what I was reading.  “Miffed that you have to find fault at a time when I just can’t take it?  You don’t HAVE to know what’s wrong.  I’ve already told you not to take it personally, but you keep poking.  So, let’s just stop communicating.  Period.”

Well, she was right about one thing.  I don’t have to know what’s wrong.  But when we’ve spent literally YEARS telling each other everything, I did feel hurt that she didn’t want to confide in me.  I’m afraid my initial response was anything but loving:  “Works for me.  But would it have killed you to at least say Congratulations?  Jeez.  You want out of the friendship?  Fine, you got it.”

Later that day, I repented a bit and wrote her a letter telling her I was worried about her.  That no, she didn’t have to tell me what was wrong, but that she needed to talk to somebody, and that the friendship door was still open if she wanted to knock on it.

I haven’t heard a thing.  Not a peep.  Not an acknowledgement.  Nothing.

I have seen her through spells of depression in the past.  She’s always been able to share, and for her to clam up like this worries me.  I don’t know if she’s suicidal, or if she just wants out of a friendship she was beginning to find burdensome.

The thing is, I don’t have a lot of friends.  I know a fair amount of people, and I’m friendly with pretty much all of them, but of real close friends, I have one, and she lives in another town and isn’t on the internet.

So, there is my sad tale of woe.  I’m not really sure why I decided to write it all, and put it out for everyone to see, except maybe to throw some light on the face of reality.

So, mostly, I’m okay.  I’ve survived worse things than the loss of a friend, but losing a friend in the middle of a pandemic is crushing.  For those of us who live alone, the isolation is painful, especially when nobody calls, nobody emails.  It’s easy to feel as though nobody cares.

Why don’t we want anyone to know we are struggling?  Are we afraid to appear “weak,” or worse, just whining?  Perhaps we just simply don’t want to burden others with feelings we consider negative.  Or maybe we don’t want others to feel guilty, or to feel as though they’ve somehow neglected us when really they’ve simply had struggles of their own?

Reaching out is not easy.  Saying we’re in pain when we’ve been assured that we are strong and brave and resilient is difficult.  If our own perception of ourselves is as a positive and encouraging person, how can we possibly share that we’re feeling anything BUT positive and encouraging?  We don’t want to let other people down, so we suffer in silence, and say we are “fine.”

We’re not all “fine” all the time.  And sometimes, when we say we are, some of us are lying.

What often happens, if we have mustered up the courage to answer the question, “How are you really?” honestly, is that we are given a laundry list of things to do to make us feel better.  Reach out.  Call someone. Volunteer.  Sew masks.  For God’s sake, DO SOMETHING so you don’t feel so shitty!  Because if YOU feel crappy, it somehow must be MY fault.  And Lord knows, we can’t have that.

Or we are given bumper-sticker wisdom:  We’re all in this together.  Snap out of it!  God loves you.  Everything will be all right.  This, too, shall pass.

I submit that these feelings are not necessarily something that need to “fixed” as to be experienced.  It’s okay to NOT be okay.  And while that may sound like bumper-sticker wisdom, it is also absolutely true.

In a sense, I’m one of the lucky ones.  My “down” days rarely last beyond a day or two.  I’m an incurable optimist, and I comfort myself with saying that not all friendships last forever, and maybe this one has just outlived its shelf-life.

So…it’s okay to feel lousy.  It’s okay to feel lonely, sad, depressed, isolated and abandoned.  It’s okay to feel all of those things.  But when those feelings become paralyzing, it IS time to take action.  There IS help available.  When you feel overwhelmed with it all, reaching out becomes the healthy thing to do.  Telling the truth is liberating.

That being said, there are times when you simply don’t WANT to tell someone how you’re really feeling.  That’s okay, too.  You don’t have to spill your guts to everyone who says, “Hi.  How are you doing?”  I remember years ago there was a saying that FINE actually meant “Fouled up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.”  So maybe sometimes, “Fine,” is a perfectly fine answer.

If you’re one of the many people who can’t afford a therapist and just want somebody to talk to, I stumbled across a website:  https://www.7cups.com.  Yes, you can get therapy there if you so desire, but you can also just find a listening ear, maybe advice, if that’s what you want, or just a live person to talk to.  If you get a crappy listener the first time around, don’t be discouraged.  Some are better than others.

I guess the moral of the story is this:  If you’re going to break off a friendship, don’t do it in the middle of a pandemic.

#howareyoureally?

When This Is All Over

When This Is All Over

By

Phoenix Hocking

 

What will “normal” look like, when this is all over?

I don’t think “normal” will look like it did; not by a long shot.  I think we will continue to be just a little afraid of each other for a very long time.  Afraid to get too close, our conversations will be shorter, and we’ll stand farther apart if we meet each other on the street.

In offices, our desks will be farther apart; gatherings in the break rooms will be staggered.  The dreaded “middle seat” will disappear on the airlines.  Seating in restaurants will seem “too close for comfort.”  In schools, the desks will be spaced just a little farther apart than they used to be, and janitors will be just a little more diligent about cleaning.  People may want to “wait for the next one,” on buses and subways.

When this is over, people will buy an extra package of toilet paper, even though the shelves are full and they already have two or three packages at home, just in case.

Some of us will have learned to be a little more frugal, and a little more afraid of “want.”

I think our frivolous buying will diminish.  We will no longer buy something just because it’s “cute,” or just because we want it.  I think we’ll have learned to think twice before shelling out our hard-earned cash.  We, hopefully, will have learned to live with less, and in our fear, have discovered that “less” is “enough.”  Hopefully, we will have learned to “save,” in preparation for the next crisis, instead of “spend” as if there is no next crisis coming.

I wonder if we will look back at our excesses and our selfishness, and be just a little ashamed of them.  I hope so.  Will we have learned to be a kinder, gentler, more compassionate people?  Or will the “every man for himself” mentality hang on for a while longer?

I think people will have a different view of what is “essential,” and what is not.  Doctors and nurses will be held in higher regard, but so will truck drivers and waitresses and teachers and pizza delivery people.

People will still go to the beach, and the park, and the local bar, but I think there will still be a reticence to get “too close.”  Dating will be a little more challenging.

We will have learned how to wash our hands properly, and keep that practice, at least for a while.  Some of us will have learned how to cook, and others will have learned to grow their own food.  I hope we will have come to appreciate the hard work school teachers do every day.  How that appreciation will manifest itself remains to be soon.

When this is all over, will we look at how much better Mother Earth is without mankind screwing her over at every opportunity?  Will we look at the cleaner streams and oceans and air, and vow to do better at keeping them that way?  Or will our love of the almighty dollar cause us to fall back into our sinful ways?

I hope, when this is all over, that we’ve learned to be better people.  That we will have learned to care for “the least of these.”  That we will appreciate the sacrifices we made, individually and collectively, to get to the “other side” of this thing.

I hope, on the other side, that we will have finally learned to trust the scientists over the politicians, our neighbors over an impersonal government, our selves over what we see on the biased news media.

I confess to feeling discouraged.  But I have to remember that we are still in the middle of this thing, and people are frightened.  Frightened of losing their livelihoods, and their homes, and even their lives.  And fear makes people do things they would not ordinarily do.  We are Americans, after all, and Americans do not like to be told what we can and cannot do, or where we can or cannot go.  Even when it’s for our own good.

But I digress.

I hope for a more peaceful world.  A kinder, gentler place where we can all raise our children in peace, and our old folks do not live in fear.  A place where the homeless are homeless no longer, and people can get the help they need without feeling “less than.”  I hope to see a world that will be cared for, and loved, and protected.  I hope to see streams and oceans that remain clear, and the air breathable again.  I hope for a place where jockeying for territory is no longer part of our political systems, a world where power is used for good and not for evil.  I pray for a place in which joy has replaced fear, where plenty is greater than want, where kindness is the norm and not the exception.

Only we can decide what our world will look like, when this is all over.

What will we choose?