Mackay, Colin - Jacob's Ladder

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Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

Online Originals

Colin Mackay

Jacob’s Ladder

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

Online Originals

Colin Mackay

Jacob’s Ladder

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

Jacob’s Ladder

First published in 2003

by Online Originals

London and Bordeaux

and print out single copies of this work for their personal

use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy,

transmission or distribution of this work, or of any excerpt,

adaptation, abridgement or translation of this work, may be

made without written permission from Online Originals.

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to

this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil

claims for damages.

ISBN 1-84045-107-6

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

This diary is not a work of fiction. It was written by Colin Mackay

over the nine weeks preceding his actual suicide on the 26th of July,

2003, which was his 52nd birthday. The manuscript was transmitted

to Online Originals before he died and received shortly afterwards.

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

But {when so sad thou canst not sadder}

Cry—and upon thy so sore loss

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder

Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross

from ‘The Kingdom Of God’

by Francis Thompson

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

One

Nine Weeks

Soon I will be dead. I am going to take the path which many

regard as cowardly, feeble, or neurotic, and kill myself. With

these words I have begun the process of setting my house in

order, securing the windows, switching off the lights, and

closing the doors. Now I feel free and easy in my resolve for

the first time since I believed in the Christmas world where

everything was warm and loving.

Two people took great trouble over me when I was

born. They were recovering from one war, another seemed

imminent, there was hardship and rationing and fear, they

had come through so much, and they thought I was a

blessed thing, a harbinger of peace, like the dove that came

to the wandering ark. It is so hard for me to think that

once—just once—I really did bring joy to others. I was their

garden, their meadow, their field full of flowers. I had not

yet disappointed them. I had not yet disappointed myself.

To think—I too was once adored. Now, fifty-two years later,

the mansion of my soul seems narrow, cold, and full of dust.

It is the domain of damp and shadows. The spider lives

there, immobile on his web.

I am going to die. It is that simple. The wilderness will

take me like a lost explorer, the sands will cover me, nothing

shall remain—but I prefer to think that I will pass from this

solitary place and walk in sunlit uplands with the true

companions I have always longed for. And I shall not grow

old, I shall not know heart disease or cancer, my body shall

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

not crumble and heap humiliation and squalor upon me.

No. I shall be in a field of flowers. For ever.

I made the decision to kill myself quite calmly, quite

rationally, and without drama. One evening, eighteen

months ago, I simply thought, “End it.” The paths of glory

lead to the grave, but all paths lead there, and if self-murder

is wrong, something will murder me, and isn’t that wrong

too? If every ending is wrong, then wrong has no meaning.

At least, my own hand will give me dignity; I will arrange

my shroud, I will sharpen my dagger, listen to beautiful

music, watch the setting of the sun, and go to my ancestors

like a Roman.

Quite a heroic picture; and so I thought, “How?” I

reviewed the possibilities, like a traveller wondering

whether he should take the train, or fly, or perhaps the car

would do, and if not there was always the bus. I decided to

electrocute myself. Drugs seemed uncertain. Then, as I

investigated further, I learned of a safer and surer way,

mixing drugs and suffocation, and so I decided upon both.

One or the other will surely accomplish the deed, and dying

like Socrates does have a certain propriety.

I did not think, “Why?” I knew the why. For years I

have known it. For years it has walked beside me,

whispering in my ear. It is my fury, my shadow. Its name is

failure, I think. Failure to become fully human, to give life,

and save life. Failure to do more than observe the passing of

the world. Failure to return my thanks for the gift of breath,

and leave the world a richer place than I found it. It is what

I see from the corner of my eye, the thing that always

vanishes whenever I turn to face it. I cannot enter a room

without wondering if it is waiting for me, if it has finally

tired of the game and is going to let me meet it, face to face.

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

This failure is not abstract. Twelve years ago, in another

country, there were people who trusted me to save their

lives, but I delayed, because I was afraid and incompetent,

and they were murdered. They are what I see. They are

what haunts me. They are there now, at this moment,

waiting for me. My Horla. And what can I say, this fool who

survived? I did my best and it was not good enough. It never

was.Sometimes I think that I am dead already; that I am

merely a dead man walking, a grey shadow, perhaps a ghost.

If I wrote about my life it would be a story about the ghost

who did not realise that he had no body.

And yet I look at myself in the mirror. I do have a body.

True, I am not a handsome man, and never have been, but

the life that has borne me for fifty-two years is still in my

hands. It is my holy water, my vital spark, my precious. Now

I am going to throw it away. I am going to do that which is

irrevocable. Perhaps it will be painful. In the films

electrocuted men die screaming; the water hisses and boils

around them, and the wires thrash like snakes. I am afraid.

Yes, I am afraid of a moment’s pain. That moment is too

long; it is an act of injustice. I don’t deserve to feel pain; it

was not my fault that these people died on that bloody field

in Bosnia.

They don’t look as though they hated me. They just

look at me sadly. I could live with them, if I had peace. But

where do you go to find peace in this world? A

monastery?—a cave in the mountains?—the land of green

ginger? The way is dark and I am far from home. Where

could it be?

The planet shrinks daily, and our age is noisy and

charmless. It is riddled with scrutiny, and lacks both mystery

and gentleness. Such an age is decadent, not because of its

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

conscious brutality, but because of the brutality of which it

is unconscious. Wherever I go the noise follows close

behind. The curs of everyday snarl at my ankles. Litter

blows in the streets and across the fields. Paradise lost

cannot be regained in this thin world.

Perhaps there is another world—perhaps there are

many worlds—perhaps the Cosmos is a Russian doll—and

in some other world I could find the tree of life or the

waters of oblivion. But not here. Not in this tedious place.

A mental place then, a garden of the mind, a Patmos

not on any map in the land of wherever. Oh, to slip between

the planes! But my body is physical. It is vulnerable. Age

and disease gnaw at it. Cruelty leaps at it like a demon,

claws bared. The will of others imprisons it, tortures it,

consigns it to suffering. And where is my Patmos then?

No, I must shed this body. Die when I will it; die before

old age wrinkles my spirit and makes the cheerfulness that I

still have, despite everything, wither. And if I did no good,

and achieved nothing, I hope, at the least, that my

intentions were decent, and that my end will have some

seemliness. I hope that I will cease to be haunted by the

dead when I have joined the dead, and am one with the

corpses who cluster round me. And I hope there will be

someone to think kind thoughts of me when I am gone, and

this weary river has wound down to the sea at last.

This book is the last flicker of the flame which I once

hoped would burn so clear and strong that humanity itself

might be delighted and comforted in its glow. How silly I

was. Not wrong: just silly. This is light from a long dead

star, and a tale that is told.

Enough of that. I have decided that I am going to kill myself

in the summer of 2003, when the days are long and the sky

Jacob’s Ladder Colin Mackay

is pleasant, and my cat will have time to settle in his new

home before the cold nights come with the rain.

Here is a paradox: I do not want to die, but I wish to

kill myself. I wish to kill myself because it is an act which

will free me, but I do not wish to be obliterated. No. I wish

to return to the place my memories come from, with each

grain of dust, and each drop of rain, the place beyond time,

the land where no one weeps. Once upon a time all my life

was in front of me. Now all my life is behind me, and I’m

not entirely sure how that happened. Past and future seem

to have got strangely mixed up, but they are full of

excitement, and promise. The present alone is a dull place, a

flatland across which the wind sighs.

Yet there are times when that wind speaks my name,

when the clouds smoke towards evening, and I remember

when I had never seen evening, I had never seen the sun set,

or the night, or the stars walking across the floor of heaven.

I could not imagine what darkness was.

Just occasionally I wish I was back in that age of faith,

but it would be as easy to climb to the moon on a beanstalk.

So I will try to remember the time of loving kindness, the

days of gentle sunshine, the nights of moonlight—and then

the blizzard will blow it all away. And then—when life goes

and all is darkness—nothing.

I was born to parents who loved me, when the world was

young and wonderful, and the hills were green. I had a small

room of my own, and on the wallpaper were redcoated

soldiers, and a big house with a flag flying from its roof, and

Alice, and Christopher Robin.

I remember—though I do not remember exactly where

it was—walking hand-in-hand between my parents in a

place where the tank traps that they called “dragon’s teeth”

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Jacob’sLadderColinMackay1OnlineOriginalsColinMackayJacob’sLadderJacob’sLadderColinMackay2OnlineOriginalsColinMackayJacob’sLadderJacob’sLadderColinMackay3Jacob’sLadderFirstpublishedin2003byOnlineOriginalsLondonandBordeauxCopyright©EstateofColinMackay,2003Allrightsreserved.Readersarewelcometoview,save...

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Mackay, Colin - Jacob's Ladder

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