Picking Stones Chapter 20

"Lighthouse"

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)

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Lighthouse

The next morning took quite a bit of time to get rolling. For one, the horrific pain and nausea enveloping the head, stomach, and every joint in the rest of the body had only minimally subsided in the three hours since waking up midst sweat soaked sheets. Aspirin and another round of fingers down my throat should be the cure. Remnants of the earlier performance squished between acid soaked teeth.

Once that was taken care of I rushed out of the room and through the lobby. I zipped up my jacket and ventured into the chilly morning where the sun hid tactfully behind a blanket of clouds. Air caught in my lungs, momentarily freezing me. I made way for a coffee shop; the biting cold helped in rejuvenating me back to reality. Feeling in my pocket and stopping in my tracks, I made an about face and walked back into the hotel.

My room was decent. It held a king bed (not that I was expecting anyone to join), a small TV, and a desk facing the window that was facing an unflattering building on the interior of the city. My decision to save forty bucks a night squandered the chance of getting ocean views and was added to the bursting list of regrets since starting my voyage.

Gray sky lit the slate matte desk. There the card was, its three red letters staring up at me. NIM. I tried remembering how it got there, but most of my memory of yesterday had vanished like the vomit flushed down the drain. I could have sworn that I jumped straight into bed after check-in. I was even wearing the same pair of jeans I had slept in, which is fine, I was planning on doing a lot of walking that morning. Why ruin a perfectly clean pair of pants for the occasion? My point is, who took the card out of my jeans and placed it onto the desk?

Next to the card was the book I had bought. Seeing it helped spark memories of words I had read from it, and of…her. The girl at the coffee shop. How could I have forgotten her?

Grabbing the book stuffing both it and the Nim card into the netherreaches of my navy blue jacket, I erupted out the hotel fiercer than the still crippling headache. I knew exactly where I’d be getting my coffee that morning.

On the way, I glimpsed myself in the window of a store. Disheveled. My eyes were almost invisible to themselves, sunk low behind the dark puffy circles under them. The shower after the purge hadn’t helped me morph into someone presentable. I guess I was on the hook for that. I couldn’t see her like this, there was simply no way.

I turned around, walked a few feet, stopped. Turned back around. My left leg, about to step, pulled back. I was around again, facing the way to the hotel. They had free coffee in the lobby. Was I that high and mighty (pretentious) that I could afford fancy coffee while my fellow hotel going peers staying at the Hampton Inn had to rely on the stale coffee offered by our hosts?

“You know what, yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Something kicked me, maybe myself. I was around again, heading once more for the coffee shop. To get a glimpse at her. Hoping to, at least.

All hope was for naught. Through its windows, I saw but a single barista behind the counter, the same guy who had been working with her yesterday morning. He greeted me with a smile and I grunted a reply. Coffee was quickly in hand.

On my way out the store, I noticed a few new books on the reading table. One in particular caught my eye, The Westing Game. I had been obsessed with it as a kid. The book had been one of the biggest inspirations in my writing in the early days, before I quit. I sighed, while what could have been faded in and out of mind. Nausea came back briefly. Was it the hangover or disgust with myself?

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Far away and off somewhere, in the valley beyond despair, you look inside yourself. There may be someone you don’t know. Look further in; there may be someone that you do know, but have long forgotten. Look beyond your limits. Realize that there was never such a thing.

The only thing holding you back is you.

Reach further, deeper into the infinite. Once you’re there, you’ll realize your place among your heroes, among God. You’ll find that you’re all equals, all dreamers. The difference is, you still think that’s all they are, dreams. Those who succeeded in turning their dreams into reality succeeded by taking themselves to the next level, evolving from dreamer to doer.

Your dreams, are your purpose. The things you want are the things you were put on this planet to achieve. They’re real. They’re waiting for you to bring them out into existence for the rest of us so we can all reap the benefits. That is your purpose.

Deep down, you’ve known what your purpose is for your entire life. Even if you can’t imagine it at this moment. Dig deep. Find it. Shed your ego, the armor you put out to block out the light everyday, and let your true self come out. We’ll get into ego and the true self later.

Life is too fleeting. You were put here for a reason. That reason existed, like you did, before you were born. It needs you to bring it to life now. God put you here to give it light, like he did you. Stop being lazy. It’s crippling, it’s embarrassing, it’s un-American. Get up, get out, and fulfill your purpose before your hands turn to dust and your heart and mind go back up to God. You need not be afraid, that purpose is for the benefit of mankind, and at the very least, yourself. Trust me.

I closed the book. I was sitting at a bench near the lighthouse she had recommended in the list she gave me yesterday. Sucking in air, it hooked like a lump in my throat. Or was that my heart so heavy? What had I done to myself? How much time had gone? But it’s never too late, the book said. Even eighty year olds pick up new hobbies. Centenarians get new friends everyday. What’s stopping you from changing?

A laundry list of bullshit reasons. Drinking, TV, worrying about impressing girls I couldn’t even picture anymore. For what? I let years dwindle away on my life, my parent’s lives, and the opportunity for me to do something significant all for nothing.

What was my purpose? What could I do to etch my name into this world? Plenty of people go on killing sprees to live in infamy, I thought. But imagining a knife in my hand and a terrified guy underneath me made my stomach turn, thankfully. That wasn’t my path.

I knew what I wanted. I knew all along. I wasn’t fooling anyone outside of myself. Waves crashed below me. I held in a tear and swallowed my sorrow in one harsh gulp.

All I ever wanted was to be a writer. Ideas for new stories used to ignite me with life. I remembered when I used to burst out laughing walking down the street from a thought that popped in my head. A good story could bring people together. A great story could save someone. What was going to save me, besides myself? What was I waiting for? The shape behind the shadows to finally jump out and cut my throat?

I could do without the last part, but still. You can still be saved. As short as a time on the planet as we had, we could be saved. But nothing will ever come save you, we had to be the ones to save ourselves. It’s the only way to make it work. It comes a point that outside noises are just that. Unless you’re ready to get up and make a change, make sacrifices, nothing will ever happen to you. Fear was the enemy. I was scared. Was I strong enough to fight it and take back the little piece of my life that I could control? Is that what I came all the way to Maine to find? I needed to break out of New York, that much I knew. It was holding me back. I’d be better off here, under a lighthouse, looking out to sea…waiting.

My stomach rolled. The excuses needed to stop. I couldn’t keep waiting.

A plane soared overhead, instinct told me to move out of the way in case it crashed. I pictured a direct hit, blowing the lighthouse to smithereens. Maybe I’d get blown out into the waves. Then I’d be shark food that turns into shit on the ocean floor, until that shit is eaten by little fish, and again by fish more little than those. The cycle would continue for a millennium. Was recycled fish feces my ticket to immortality?

I kicked a rock and watched it tumble down the cliffs before it vanished into the waves. It made me think of my now deceased coworker, Orla. Life wasn’t fair. It’s so strange. Here I was, on “Vacation.” A no-show at that woman’s funeral. Her family, the closest people she ever had, had no idea I even existed (unless she mentioned me in passing at dinner once, “Oh I think you’ve mentioned that guy, ma.”). I was unable to shake her going into the void all week. She had been at the same lighthouse I stood at just a few weeks ago. Now—

I had to stop, picturing the blackness she was in felt like a thousand pound anvil crushing my forehead. Claustrophobia. The single most terrifying image a person can imagine. I couldn’t help but shudder. That book said there was God. I needed it to be right.

There was no time to waste. Not even a single second. Standing watching the waves, the black painted railing separating me from the rocky cliffs was held tight in my hands. Slowly, slowly, slowly the railing turned into the shoulders of my ten year old self. So much happier, so much more light, his spark wasn’t extinguished yet. What was that sound? I realized it was me, begging him to not be lazy. I made him promise me to never touch alcohol or weed or overindulge. To never stop dreaming.

He said okay, but I didn’t dematerialize. My words to him had fallen on deaf ears. I couldn’t travel back in time to stop him. I needed to make the changes now. Become what I wanted myself to be. It wasn’t too late. It wasn’t too late.

“It’s not too late,” I said another hundred times before I let go of myself, and came back to the sea, to the waves crashing on the cliffs, and the lighthouse standing proudly ahead.

Then my field of vision narrowed. My eyes saw into a tunnel. At its end was a figure. I couldn’t see a face. It wore a black cloak, and just stood there waiting for me to come to it. I didn’t move. The shape floated to my right and faded behind the lighthouse before everything vanished and I was staring at the sea again. The card buzzed in my pocket. If Nim and I were really playing a game, I knew there would be something for me to pick soon. It was still my turn.

Walking closer to the lighthouse, my heart battled mind and heart won. A few more minutes here, then I’d get a notebook. I’d get the notebook and go back to that coffee shop. Not for her, but for me. I’d write something, anything. Even just a word would signal victory. The beginning of the change.

The lighthouse was eighty feet tall. Its black top and white body freshly painted. Looking up at its beacon I wondered how far into the gray sea it you could see from that vantage point. Sky was still gray and it was freezing. A harsh wind whipped off the waves and onto my face, but warmth started to tingle around me on my approach to the lighthouse.

Standing at its base was a green sign that read the name of the park, Fort Williams Park. A few fun facts I learned that afternoon: George Washington had ordered the lighthouse to be built there in 1787 and it had taken four years to build. Interesting. Then I wondered if the life of its lighthouse keeper was as lonely as mine and if the beacon could still light the black sea on a dark day.

Surrounding the lighthouse was more railings guarding us from a fall on the granite beneath. Pasted along the top of the railing were a bunch of stickers. There were states and countries and restaurants and provinces. I circled the lighthouse, walking and walking. Ocean sprayed on me from its crashes on the cliffs. My tongue tasted salt on my lips. Walking and walking. Was this limbo?

Finally escaping whatever I had gotten sucked into, I was back at the stickers and found myself reading them. New York, Missouri, Ontario, Sicily, and more. Just before my eyes were about to peel away and get one last look at the lighthouse, at the sea, something caught them.

It was a brand new sticker, shining brightly against its salt-stained peers. This sticker had no creases, its face smooth to the touch. No dust or salt or dirt on it. It was like I had been caught in a trance. Slowly, slowly, I peeled the sticker off the fence. Its glue so fresh it came off quickly without any resistance. It was like someone had just stuck it there. But that was impossible. I was the only one at the lighthouse, the only one in the entire park.

Bringing the sticker up close to my face, I read the words on it out loud partly in disbelief and to make sure I could hear myself. “Nimrod - Portland, ME.” It was a sticker from a bar a block up from my hotel. I laughed to myself and shook my head.

I was sure of it this time. In my hands was my latest pick.

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You can also buy me a coffee—I’m much too pretentious for the free stuff they serve in hotel lobbies.

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