this is the last post.

i finished the magic mountain today. i started it months ago--this date, exactly--when things were so different. but i had a feeling, i had a feeling that it was inevitable that once i finished the book, that this site would come to an end as well. maybe this is why i tarried so.

but i'd never have guessed how it would end, either the book or the site. i was drafting this in my mind today; i had the tone down & i had the song chosen, but something interrupted it, something completely unforeseen, & now the tone & song have changed--but not the need to end.

i'm ending b/c i need to, not b/c i'm downhearted over a girl or b/c i fail to see the point. i'm not downhearted over a girl--indeed, i feel, at the risk of immense hyperbole, like i've seen the stone rolled away from the crypt; i am a believer, but it's not a belief anyone else can understand, nor would see good reason for such a belief. they may be right, but my faith is unshakeable at this moment. i feel like a pilgrim on his way to a shrine.

nor do i fail to see the point. i know that a number of you really enjoy this site, that i've helped at least a few of you through some difficult times, just as surely as you've helped me. i'm sorry to be giving it up, but i'm not vain enough as the title of this site suggests to believe that it'll affect you all that much.

i'm leaving, simply, b/c there's not enough time. i'm going to be v. busy & i relish that idea. it's been quite some time since i've been occupied. this is where the magic mountain comes in. if you're worried about me "spoiling" plot points of mann's book--if "plot" can even be considered a part of the book--i'd advise you to leave now. thank you so much for reading. i appreciated it immensely. try hard to stay well.

now, for the rest of you. the magic mountain was the culmination of all of my concerns of the past year. (it's now been a year since i returned from new york; it's almost a year since i kickstarted vs&l.) i've thought about love, time, despair, purpose, society, &c.--all covered in mann's book. indeed, i had to put it down for a considerable stretch of time b/c it said too much to me about me, mirrored too exactly events in my own life.

hans castorp goes to the sanatorium to visit his ill cousin. there's nothing wrong w/ him--or so he thinks. he plans to stay three weeks, but not long after he gets there, he is diagnosed w/ a "moist spot" in his lungs. in a sense, none of us is completely healthy & given the rigor of berghof, all of our healths would be found wanting.

three weeks eventually becomes seven years.

but what ails hans is nothing physical; kierkegaard would have seen it from the start : he suffers from despair. he is, as herr settembrini surmises, one of "life's problem children." he becomes enamored of berghof, where he has nothing to do but study & read & take nature walks & pine for frau chauchat. if he did push-ups & sit-ups--strictly forbidden!--this would be the recipe for my life over the last several years. i sat around, observed mankind, read up on everything imaginable, worked a piddling job, hid out in academia as surely as hans hid out in the sanatorium. i performed what binx bolling called a "vertical search" : i examined life from high up in a tower, looking down, as opposed to the "horizontal search," which involved actual living.

as i made my final descent down the mountain, trying to find the way out of my tower, i worried that hans would never break free of his despair, that he had become the perfect patient, embracing his role as a problem child. i'd already made up my mind at this point to make serious changes to my own life : i wanted hans, so much my doppelgänger, to do the same--i almost felt as if i needed him to do it. he lost his cousin; he lost friends; he lost family; he lost his ties to the world below; he even lost frau chauchat, for whom he waited years & years. i wanted him to gain something, to make a choice.

something does happen, "the enchantment was broken, ... he was released, set free--not by his own actions, as he had to admit to this shame, but set free by elementary external forces, for whom his liberation was a very irrelevant matter." what happens is world war i; everything is turned upside-down. but he does make a choice, a peculiar choice given what we know of his character : he chooses to fight in the war. i am proud of him, as proud as my friend was of me, simply for making a choice.

the last chapter of the magic mountain is called "the thunderbolt." i read it on my lunch break at work today. today ... it was a day for seeing ghosts. i saw old college friends; old customers; old co-workers; and i saw her, i saw x, i saw my "beatrice," my frau chauchat. she was as surprised to see me as i her. we had little time to talk; she asked for book recommendations & i made them.

i did not foresee this. i planned on writing this post today, on ending it; i knew how it would end, i knew the song. & then i was struck by a thunderbolt ... again. i thought based on how i'd been treated lately, that i'd sufficiently gotten over her, that i was ready to go. i dare not speak for her, but for me the effect was the same as ever. draped in stormclouds, she brought w/ her confusion; she issued thunderbolts from her bitten nails. i was confounded & perplexed; elementary chores became difficult. i was reminded of why hitchcock called his greatest love story, vertigo. i felt precisely like james stewart as he watches kim novak for the first time : the music swells at her approach; the lights brighten to illuminate the profile; the camera angles used in successive shots create a vortex--into this maelstrom, jimmy & i fell together, helplessly & happily.

let me not deceive you : like vertigo, a happy ending seems unlikely. she was v. polite to me, complimented me; her body language indicated that she was pleased to see me & she waved as she left. but she's given me no hope, since i saw her, of responding to any of my calls. but that doesn't mean that there is no hope. regardless, i feel like kierkegaard's independent lover, barthes' man who doesn't wish to possess--all the things i'd written about months ago. what i understand now, what i've reclaimed is a sense of the future--that it will exist, that it is nothing to fear, that she & i will both occupy it & as long as that is so, no one knows what may yet happen. & while one cannot know the future, what i do know & remember fondly is the past--& what we had together is something that would cure the lovesick troubadour, that will be a source of warmth & light as fall approaches & both start to become scarce.

fall approaches! september's coming soon! september's not so far away! &c. w/ it, i will be busy peddling books & molding young minds, showing them, as much as possible, how to write. i will continue to write, which is one of the reasons i'm looking at a future of teaching; i will also continue to listen to music, naturally. i will be buoyed by both, my twin enthusiams, as well as by the enthusiams of all those i know. i'm v. excited. knowing myself as well as i do, i know this feeling cannot last & so this is why i've chosen to write this, to memorialize this moment, as well as this site.

thank you all. thank you all. thank you all. i cannot say it enough; but if i said it too much, i'd truly give the lie to this site's name. thank you for what you've given me; thank you for what you allowed me to give you.

allow me to give you one final thing. it is the song hans castorp sings to himself on the battlefield, the prayer he recites to keep himself from harm as his fellows fall beside him.

franz schubert - "der lindenbaum" (baritone, dietrich fischer-dieskau) (from the winterreise lp, available for purchase here.)

the lyric, translated from the german :

at the well by the gate
there stands a linden tree;
i dreamed in its shadow
many a sweet dream.
i carved in its bark
many a word of love;
in joy and in sorrow
i was always drawn to it.

again today i had to travel
past it in the depths of night.
there even in the darkness
i closed my eyes.
and its branches rustled,
as if they called to me:
"come here to me, friend,
here you'll find peace!"

the cold winds blew
right into my face;
the hat flew off my head,
i didn't turn around.
now i am many hours
distant from that place,
and i still hear it whispering:
"you'd find peace here!"

i remember carving names in wood, names that still find a way to haunt me (though they're so small!)--& i know i have to get past that point. i've started down a path : i hope a friend has the courage to come along ... but i hope i have the courage, should she not, to keep walking past the whispers & the calls; i hope i have the courage to turn away from what's easy, what's merely comfortable, so that someday i might truly deserve both ease & comfort.

mann writes :

it was truly worth dying for, this song of enchantment. but he who died for it was no longer really dying for this song and was a hero only because ultimately he died for something new--for the new word of love and for the future in his heart.

to love, then, & to the future! i thank you all again for walking w/ me this far. perhaps our paths will cross again in the future.

goodbye.