The Illustrated Encyclopedia of an Imaginary Universe

Yesterday, a close friend of mine had a terrible reaction to medication he was taking. He described, vaguely, the tragically horrible experience, the details of which I cannot recall. What did stick out in my mind was his statement, ‘I prayed that I would die.’ Normally immune to such heartfelt pleas of humanity, I was shocked into silence.

He had been to the hospital and was feeling fine now, if only a bit weak. The doctors assured him that the weakness he felt would be the only side effects of yesterday’s trauma and he took solace in this. Fortunately, pain, the actual physical feeling of it, is something we cannot recall. But his voice sounded tiny on the phone and several times I had to ask him to speak up over the din of the diner in which I stood.

It was early for lunch, which is how I prefer it. I find it more relaxing to take one’s lunch in relative peace and at a leisurely pace rather than having to nearly wallow it whole merely to clear your table for the next group of hungered ruffians disguised as jacketless urban businessmen. I was mildly distracted that day so I wanted the extra time to sit for awhile, read and perhaps write a bit.

I can’t actually remember what it was that prompted me to stop my meal, put down my book, and fork out 35 cents to call him, but I did. I certainly don’t attribute to it anything other than just a strong urge to simply phone him, be friendly, and perhaps make plans. I knew he had been feeling sick and I know his history for ill health. In fact, yesterday morning, I spoke with him briefly over breakfast and he mentioned that he was fighting off his cold but that he did not wan to miss any more work. I had no idea he had ended up in the hospital later on that afternoon.

When I sat back down, I suddenly remembered an angry phone conversation from earlier in the week. A long-standing and highly dramatic friend was taking me to task for having missed a carefully planned party. I felt I had good reason for not having shown up although she was right in saying that I could have at least called. I didn’t see the severity of it and in the back of my mind, I’m certain I wasn’t thought of as ‘missing’ at any given time during the night except perhaps as a brief afterthought during clean-up. Her anger, however, was worsened when she found out that I wouldn’t be able to attend another function of sorts due to previous laid, and completely unalterable, plans on that very same night. But these details aren’t what made me curious, they’re just nearly forgettable background: it’s just prologue to irony.

At any given moment, any one of us can die. Without breaching too harshly into Buddhist and Sufist teachings, it shouldn’t be important to us when people die for our reliances should not be upon them. However, when, at one moment, I’m being berated with petty bickering and threats of ending a friendship, and the next, I’m being told a friend of mine ‘prayed for death’ in the face of the terrible, physical pain he faced, I can’t help but feel a bit of tender and delicate derision for those who seem to be fueled by petty bickering. It just makes me wonder how people can possibly survive having so narrow a scope of vision that they think something so minor as missing a party should even matter in the face of greater issues.

Perhaps it is through that very device that survival is sustained. I stick to my decision that I will find other means upon which to base and further my life. Reliance on friendships, or on the trappings of obligation therein, will never divorce me from my freedom.

Or something like that.