The rooftop of Harrington Building provided the most spectacular view of the town at night. At least, Ethan and his sister had always thought so. When they were in high school, the two would come up the fire escape every weekend around eight in the evening to meet their friend Sally, and the three would sit on the ledge, overlooking the ocean, sufficiently hidden from people in the streets, and talk about their ideas and dreams and their futures, what they hoped to be. It was, in a way, a form of escape, a breath of fresh air, away from the disagreeable chain their parents had bound them with when they, their parents, gave them their greatest gift, religion. Being outstandingly rational, pragmatic and inquisitive about their spiritual lives, characteristics welcomed unenthusiastically by their parents, the three had a melancholic understanding that surpassed words, and they were bound by it.
Tonight, having always climbed the steps of the building’s fire escape with Eileen panting behind him and him looking forward to Sally’s  smile to greet him, beaming, at the top, it seemed foreign to Ethan that, for the first time, he was going up there alone, without expectations. He had not been to this building in five years, but he could remember most of the evenings he had spent on top of its seventh-floor ledge, smoking cigarettes and discussing Kierkegaard, as if they had happened over the past year. And as he rushed up the steps, his thoughts rocked with jumbled phrases from a newspaper piece he had read that morning. “…a long time struggle with bipolar disorder ... devout Catholic parents Michael and Susan Wilson … survived by her brother and lifelong companion … wonderful spirit … attended UC-Berkeley along with her twin brother … preceded in death … extraordinarily intelligent, lively and joyous … advances in mathematics … burial will be at 3pm …Eileen … Ms. Eileen Wilson.”
It seemed Atlas had been relieved of his punishment because when Ethan reached the rooftop, he looked up and felt the sky had never looked so united with the earth since ancient times, that Uranus and Gaia were having a heated affair, as if the universe had united in a farewell celebration. The sky was painted with sparkling stars and they steered elegantly into the quiet ocean. A crescent moon glimmered in the distance, a cool land breeze pressed against his back and a thin, almost invisible, layer of fog permeated the town under his knees. For a moment, he had forgotten what he was there to do.
A car honked, and his mind is refocused. He walked slowly, but intently, towards the edge of the building and looked down on the view that was so familiar to him. He remembered Sally talking to him and his sister as they sat in front of her like students. “The teachings go like this, don’t they? ‘God is good.’ And we accept – we eat it up – no questions asked. ‘If you do something evil you’ll lose God’s favor, but you can always return to him.’ At this point the logic gets fuzzy and there are some who ask questions about validity what’s being said, but nobody ever has any proof except the usual ‘I can feel it in my heart.’ But in reality, that’s just their way of saying, ‘I am comfortable where I am, and why lead me to face the truth.’ I guess they are in a sense, more logical because they don’t have to think about the emptiness. They just take the words and try to live by them, hoping that they will avoid all the sins warned against by the Bible though this is only practical in a child’s mind, but the seed can only grow where it’s fallen, and the children are the seeds of their parent’s elusion. Now, elusions are great; they give meaning to an ultimately absurd existence, but that’s true only as long as they are not confronted by the realities of life. But when Life, with its leather jacket, “NY” hat backwards and a shining dog tag that has “No!” engraved in it, gets in the way, we look back to what mommy and that priest had told us. We look around, past that rosy hue that screened our perception for us, and we discover that the world was indeed black in its essence. Then all that we’ve been told comes crashing down and we are afraid to make a move in fear that the reality is different from the ideal. Cascading failures.”
“Cascading failures,” he repeated to himself.
He imagined what falling felt like when you did it intentionally, fully aware that what awaited to receive you is neither water nor cushion. A faint thought is voiced inside his head. “You don’t have to do this, Ethan.” It was a pointless remark, as far as Ethan was concerned. There was no way he would change his mind, but he found the desperation of those simple words, upholding a primordial instinct, titillating. It reminded him of his college professor’s lecture about the human psyche. “The id, ladies and gentlemen,” he had said, “is the simplest and most basic form of the psyche that drives human desire. Freud calls it our ‘dark, inaccessible nature.’ With the id in control, all adults would act ridiculously needy and self-preservative – quite comparable to overgrown babies – wanting to listen to no one or to any reason except its own impulses. Just imagine how a country’s foreign policy would be set up if it looked at its interaction with other countries as would a toddler… On the other extreme end, we have the superego. It reveals the absolute internalization of society’s rules we are fed by our parents and teachers and whatnot. The superego aims for perfection, and if it were up to it, say since the popular establishment of Catholicism in state, the Western world population would be all nuns and priests – non-pedophilic priests, of course…So as Oscar Wilde nicely puts it, we want everything in moderation.” Ethan smirks softly at the end.
He stood there for a minute, wallowing in the preciousness of every second. Finally, he felt it was time, but for some reason, he hesitated. “What was your reason to live, again?” he thought, “Because you enjoy the excitement and the thrill of life? No. You can appreciate life and its beauty for a moment, but let’s be real, Ethan, you’ve rarely got up in the morning and said to yourself, ‘The promise of today is impeccably magnetic, and to sleep in would be a shameful waste.’ You’ve never said it and believed it, so what’s the point if you don’t have anything to look forward to. Without purpose, we are nothing. Hell, even with purpose and goals, we are nothing. We both know where this will end. In a coffin, somewhere in time, rotting, so why delay it. Why go through the days where you feel like s*** every second, hoping the Paxil and Lithium would kick in and you can leave your room again or pick up your violin…Eileen is gone now, so you don’t have to stick around for anyone’s sake anymore. Nobody would be emotionally scarred or something. A quick and clean exit from this horror show.
“Was it Mill that said the life of the virtuous is the most valuable and even in unenviable situations such a life is the only one worth pursuing? It sounds like something he would say, but I am sure he wasn’t depressed as a result of being ‘virtuous.’ I guess what he had in mind was more pursuit of knowledge and dedication to work than pursuit of knowledge, dedication to work plus deprivation of all your nature basically desires, the things that lack sophistication. Those are what got you surprisingly, eh.  No drinks or drugs or lies…Meh. You kind of did this to yourself, but it doesn’t matter. You could try and go out with The Road Less Traveled By, but you’d be kidding yourself. The poem itself is ridiculing people like you. It is, however, interesting though, isn’t it? How – how you’re trying to console yourself…At least you did not deceive yourself in life… and there we go again…”
The soft, yet sharp, giggle of a young girl reached his ears from somewhere in the distance. Then he is four year old, running in the park. There is a yellow balloon floating up ahead, and he is in pursuit of it. All around him, he hears children’s voices. The cool wind rushes against his face and flushes into his lungs, never seeming to come out. A blonde girl his age is running after the balloon a few feet in front of him. Both of them giggle intermittently. The balloon is rising. “Catch it, Eileen. Catch it,” Ethan shouts breathlessly, but Eileen starts to fall behind. Soon, he overtakes her. He sees her sparkling blue eyes shift between his intent face and the dangling string. She is laughing the whole time, and he feels as if she had asked him to carry on, to bring her back the balloon. He feels it was his duty as her brother, and so he ran faster. He could see that he is gaining on it because the string now dangles inches from his outstretched hand. He, however, knows he is getting too tired. He tells himself, “Catch it and you’ll be the master of the universe, fail and you’ll fall!” Then he immediately lunges forward, taking full flight with his hand overreaching for the string.
His left had left the ground, and his body had moved forward. Decimating shock, and then absolute terror. In the last moments as his feet scrambled for a footing, the thought that he hadn’t caught the balloon troubled him.
Two days later, the local newspaper had the following piece:
Ethan Wilson, aged 24, passed away December 10, 2014. Despite his consistent struggle with depression, Ethan lived life to the fullest, seizing every moment for its organic preciosity. His friends remember him as being deeply philosophical and wildly critical, not to mention a fervent perfectionist. He was precocious in every sense of the word, and his fascination with the arts prove just that. He was a skilled violinist and an amusing poet. Ethan also found inspiration in the words of others, and enjoyed letting their words and idea take him away. An intriguing youth, he cherished moments shared than outlooks shared. Ethan is predeceased by his parents Michael and Susan Wilson, his twin sister Eileen, and lifelong close friend Sally Jenkins. His burial will take place at 3 pm at Grove Cemetery. The following is an excerpt from his poetry notebook:
The snows that burn away,
Like tears of God,
Reveal the world anew.
We are reborn.
Nothing is lost forever.*

*Poem taken wholly from the TV series Monk.