We felt the lonely beauty of the evening, the immense roaring silence of the wind, the tenuousness of our tie to all below. There was a hint of fear, not for our lives, but of a vast unknown which pressed in upon us. A fleeting feeling of disappointment—that after all those dreams and questions this was only a mountain top—gave way to the suspicion that maybe there was something more, something beyond the three-dimensional form of the moment. If only it could be perceived.

— Thomas F. Hornbein Everest—The West Ridge

October 25, 1998

Lude's dead.

October 25, 1998 (An hour??? later)

Wow, not doing so well. But where else to turn? What mistakes have been made. A sudden vertigo of loss, when looking down, or is it really looking back?, leaves me experiencing all of it at once, which is way too much.

Supposedly by the time Lude made it out of the hospital he'd gotten very familiar with all those painkillers. Too familiar. He wasn't in the kind of shape he used to be in before Gdansk Man got to him. He couldn't shake off the effects as easily. He couldn't resist them as easily either. It sure didn't help that the fucker he called his lawyer kept feeding him all that bull about getting rich and living free.

By summer, Lude was tumbling straight down into oblivion. Morning shots—and not booze either. Somehow he'd gotten mixed up with hypodermic needles. Plus pills and plenty of other stuff. And all for what? Addressing what pain? No doubt at the heart of him. Unshared, unseen, maybe not even Lude himself. I mean "not even recognized by Lude himself." What I meant to say. And then the worst question of all: if I'd been there, could I have made a difference?

Apparently in August, the front Lude had defended for so many years finally began to fail.