Hollow

Within the hollow halls

between whispers of lost lovers

A beguiling silence calls

my heart to suffer

Below the Lord's last steeple

amidst the clanging of bells

Assemble the sleeping people

to fear their self-sown hells

And in the darkest mornings

in the loneliest skies

You won't see my soul mourning

for I've lost your eyes

You know I'd rather stumble always

through the worst of their hells

Than kneel in the hallways

in the castles and vales

To look up at them maskless

to plead their forgiveness

Seek pity in the masses

and admit my last weakness

Admit my great shame

for my love, in my haste

To forget my great pain

I've forgotten your face

and I've forgotten your name

All I want is one night to arise

and through some mirage or false sight

See your image, your guise

Alone in the light

So reach out your hand, love! —

past that cruel smile

Leering from heaven above —

to hold mine a while

My darling, please hear

and say it's not true

For my greatest of fears

is that you've forgotten me too

I fear the fever takes me this morning. If not for my last vestige of driving will: the need to complete, or at the least attempt, this last and most important thing I will ever do in my sorry and miserable life, I'd be gone already. Ah! but there’s so much left to do.

This project is all that holds me together: my brain, my body, and of course my suffering soul to the whole contraption.

And so I remember for you:

Sometimes I’d wish he had not been famous. But I would still see his name in the window cases of bookstores when I would walk along the streets and I would hear his lyrics (thank the Lord not his crackling and violent voice, that was enjoyed almost exclusively by fanatics) when I tuned into the radio in my car.

Sometimes I wish I could simply forget Ari Isaiaksson. I know I could, again, but for the damn reminders. He was strong, Ari; he had left his mark upon the world and me, almost spitefully.

I would have forgotten him, if not for the damn fame.

I was interested only in Mitch the Cat, in my Loki, not any of his other aliases. If I could, I would forget his birth name in an instant and never look back.

My wish has near come true. I remember close to nothing of Ari Isaiaksson, save the damn name.

But I remember Mitch the Cat

His sorry excuse for a family buried an empty coffin (though they did not know it: I arranged everything, as was set down in his meandering will). They buried it beneath a marble tombstone in the tumbling family plot in Maine.

The tombstone read:

here lies

Ari Isaiaksson.

writer,

and dreamer,

and lover,

a man now dead.

They hated the epitaph but in the end they respected his wishes and my sheer will.

It was soon after his song “White” converted the collective youth of the English-speaking world. This was the first work that became widely recognized, although he did not become famous for another few years. That occurred when Innocence Lost became the New York Times number one bestseller for an afternoon.

He wrote the song “White” and created, from scratch with a variety of instruments and a perfectionistic, eccentric ear for sound, the beat for it.

It was soon after that he told a journalist:

I find my own self infinitely more interesting than anybody I have ever met. Including you.

The journalist shot back:

You don't know me very well, Mitch the Cat.

I am sure he smiled at that.

Princess, I don't have to. I don't know myself very well either but I stand by my initial statement.

The journalist printed their entire conversation in one of Los Angeles's independent yet successful magazines; after reading through it, Mitch the Cat admitted he was impressed by the man's bravery (and he chuckled about his own quiet vitriol).

Javier dos Santos was his name, and from then on Mitch the Cat spoke almost exclusively to him. Any other time, he would rant that we was half-quoted, far worse, he assured me, than being misquoted. In my humble opinion, they half-tried to make him look half-sane, and gods, did he hate that. For, in truth, Mitch was anything but sane and he relished it.

He preferred to chat with Javier because Javier listened and tried to understand instead of simply reporting. So he was never a popular figure among the average societal critic, but, coincidentally enough, he didn't really care.

However, the young, the counterculture, loved him. Some loved him for his writing, some for his music, and some simply because he was fucking Ari Isaiaksson, Mitch the Cat: a half-superstar who was an actual crazy person. He became a cult legend: an incurable egotist and drifting fanatic. Mitch the Cat almost became a god, which I found unsurprising and somewhat ironic, for that's exactly how I thought of him.

If you haven’t realized: it's true: he was crazy. Ari Isaiaksson, and especially Mitch the Cat, was legitimately crazy if, at the time, still a functioning member of society. And he knew he was crazy. And he didn't care.

One day, several months before it happened, Mitch the Cat told me:

"I have decided I detest worms. I shall be cremated."

We were on his deck in the early morning, as per usual.

"And what, pray, would you like me to do with the ashes?"

"Who the fuck said you get 'em?"

I waited.

"Buy a Grecian urn."—I have told you he loved me, he was mine—"An original. I don't care how much it costs, you've got the money. But only afterwards. I don't want to see it. Ever. And you will put my charred remains in there and set it up on your mantle and you will look to it for guidance each and every of your miserable days—all those you have left, at least—and pray to it for everlasting guidance and the humility of a buddha; and when you die, blow the whole damn house to termite meat."

"My house?"

"Yeah."

"What," I repeated, "would you like me to do with the ashes?"

He jumped to his feet, roared at his forsaken and aloof world and vociferously kicked the bottle of vodka. I noticed—in a moment so infinitesimally small it barely existed at all—that he checked that the bottle was capped beforehand, so I knew he wanted to talk about it.

"The Cat's ninth death scares you," I said serenely.

"Not as much as it does you," he shot back and that hurt because of all the implications that were all true. He lit his pipe; I looked away.

He was on his deathbed (even if I refused to believe it at the time). I was staring out the window at everything and nothing, as I am apt to do.

"You know what would be comforting?"

"Not yet."

"Shut it, schmuck.”

“I disagree.”

"If everyone under, say, eighteen, who died, what if they're given a second chance?"

"You past the mark a little while ago."

"Another go, right? A reset. Innocence regained—rejuvenated. You're a phoenix until the world decides you can make your own decisions.

"Seventeen, though, not eighteen. Fuck social conventions.”

“But how would any of us know?”

“We wouldn’t,” he replied as though the question was ludicrous. “We’re not supposed to know everything.  I am quite happy knowing very little at all.”

That was bullshit. He was quite happy knowing quite a lot.

But I nodded and thought about what he had said about phoenixes with the world awaiting them.

I attended his funeral, but I would not cry for him.

Go ahead, Cornelius, you can cry.

Yes. I wanted to—with every cell of my body did I want to.

But no. I would not.

Why so stubborn? Why so serious? you must ask.

Well, he would've loved for me to weep, and I refused to give his lingering spirit (of it's malicious lingering I had no doubt—he was not yet done with me) the satisfaction.

I would have looked to Noemi for comfort in those lonely moments but she was not there. I would have looked to my mother, but she was not there either. And, then, begrudgingly, I would have looked to Mitch the Cat, but he was gone now too.

And so I tried looking to myself, as Mitch the Cat always had.

I found it an incredibly melancholy but peaceful experience. I felt hollow: like the coffin; I felt simple: like the epitaph; and, like the Cat, I realized I felt weary.

Chuck Palahniuk also told me:

You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.

I thought about that.