WA - Unidentified Male: "Lyle Stevik", Grays Harbor, 17 Sept 2001 - #4

[akashana]

I have always leaned toward a 9/11 connection, even if only that the terrible event was just the straw that broke the camel's back for an otherwise depressed and distraught individual. I also see him as possibly a gay man, but that is probably because he so closely resembles my late friend, Luis, who was gay.

 

[brett1968]

Firstly, thank you to akashana, chaddylex, defender123, KLCD620, Mandy113, neverletgo, outofthedark, Woodland and all others for appreciating this post.
(I didn't return to this site for two days out of fear I'd get told off for writing too much!)
I also thought about 'Lyle's' being a gay-type of relationship too but didn't bother adding that.
The song's existence might actually be an erroneous reference on my part, so sorry about that.
I thought that Google referenced a song titled, 'Lyle Stevik' when I was searching but can't find it to confirm this now.
I really do think that he intended to create a mysterious phenomenon from out of his death and that the person to whom the message was sent has already received it, but they must remain silent.
I am open to suggestions for any theory to the contrary though, of course!
I also strongly agree with the 9/11 connection being a major contributing factor in his death and there being an Eastern European background to his nationality rather than that of a Canadian. One of my friends is macedonian and at 43 hasn't a grey hair on his head. he'd easily pass for late twenties and if this were the case for 'Lyle' the it really would compound the identification problems. He may well be in his forties.
I looked at the map of the Best Western Plus Rama Inn at 1019 s progress st Idaho and I wonder if anyone from the shopping centre that closely backs onto the motel there that he gave as his previous address might remember him?
There's also a Trading Post nearby which, (if that's a type of pawn shop like they are here in Australia), then maybe 'Lyle' might have been there to sell or pawn some property and they might remember him?
There's also a motel 6 that he may have spent some time in there too?
Also, there's a hospice fairly close to that motel too.
It might be that he had a close relative or a lover that he visited there and who passed on before he committed suicide. Perhaps someone from the staff of that hospice might remember him?
After all, he certainly left clues with a reason to either deliberately create an unsolvable mystery and or to leave a trail to be found so that there would be some answers.
If this second option is the case then there might be some link to him or he may be known at the nearby Idaho State University Meridian Health Science Centre?
Perhaps he had a car he had worked on or sold at the nearby Meridian Automotive and Machine?
Or, if there was someone who he knew who passed on in that nearby 'Horizon Home Health and Hospice' they were buried in the nearby Meridian cemetary?
It may be that the name of Stevik was one that 'Lyle' chose because of its close resemblance to his own and that his actual surnane was something croatian or serbian like 'Stevicic'?
I wonder if the Meridian cemetery have a record of anyone with the surname of 'Stevicic' (or similar) interred there during the period of 2000-2001? They usually happily provide lists of their plots to people who inquire.
I guess the best i could do would be to mail them some pictures of 'Lyle' and some information since most unsolicited emails just get ignored these days.
I really wished I lived in America!

 

[brett1968]

Does anyone know if anyone ever approached the author of 'You Must Remember This' in relation to this case?

 

[annemc2]

Funny you should mention that, Brett1968 - I had a friend invite me to go and see her speak tomorrow! Unfortunately I can't go, but maybe my friends could try and ask. I did tell them why I read _YMRT_, so they kind of know the backstory.

 

[brett1968]

There are some times that I think that there is somebody looking for him but has turned up empty, and then there are times where I wonder if anybody really cared about him at any time when he was still alive.

I'd put out the possiblity that he might have been a foster kid, but for some reason that theory just doesn't fit.

I'm thinking that maybe he's an illegal immigrant refugee from the Bosnian conflict? The surname is very much of Serbian origin. That war was so full of atrocities that, sadly, it isn't uncommon for survivors (all pity to them) to commit suicide rather than live in a constant state of panic/anxiety.

 

[outofthedark]

I'm thinking that maybe he's an illegal immigrant refugee from the Bosnian conflict? The surname is very much of Serbian origin. That war was so full of atrocities that, sadly, it isn't uncommon for survivors (all pity to them) to commit suicide rather than live in a constant state of panic/anxiety.

Could be. This is why I'm interested in seeing if his information could be sent to Interpol, if they do this sort of thing.

 

[brett1968]

Criminal organizations have easily smuggled people out of life or death war zones, as they did for example in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian war in the early nineties.
When they did it was especially children, I would say he may have been a baby or a very young boy then, so 'Lyle' may have been one of these refugees who entered the USA or Canada as an orphan who went by an assumed name, was paid under the counter and was therefore essentially an underground ‘non-existent’ citizen? When 9/11 happened he may have seen the walls closing in?
However morose, it is interesting to note that 'Lyle' hanged himself in a wardrobe, a place devoid of light in a room which I'd suggest was probably not lit when those who discovered him entered it, meaning that he died in the dark and then deliberately in the darkest part of the room.
He also asked to be moved into the middle of the motel, under the premise that he was disturbed by the all night parties of the establishment across the road.
He had himself moved into the middle of the motel where it would be darkest.
This clue has something to do with the extinguishing of light and may be another deliberate sign?
The name our 'Lyle' chose as a surname, 'Stevik', is conspicuously absent of the letter 'c' that is present in the character’s name, 'Stevick'.
The letter ‘c’ is the mathematical symbol for the speed of light/light in the science of physics.
In his name is this absence of that which is the mathematical symbol for 'light’ an action by ‘Lyle’ that he performed deliberately?
With the letter 'c' deliberately removed from his name as though a reference to that particular symbol’s representation of light, there may also be in this action a message.
This light 'Lyle' was planning to extinguish, his light, his ‘c’, the light that for him had ended, and had made things seem so dark and grim that he felt it necessary to take this light of his own life, ‘c’, from the world?
This clue occurs, possibly with the intention of pointing out the extinguishing of a light, (as it is often argued by physicists that 'c' is an imprecise symbol for the 'constant': 'speed of light/light' and there is, (as you might imagine), the argument that light has varying speeds and wavelengths and so it should not be determined simply as ‘c’, a constant but as a variable. It's the nature of the variable that's causing the friction.
I believe that ‘Lyle’s was of the opposing argument.
The opposing argument is that light is that which takes all manner of forms, that it is of which we all are made from and are as a part, veritably composed of.
This is why these physicists argue that the symbol for the speed of light should not remain ‘c’ for ‘constant’.
In the context of this it might be surmised that ‘Lyle’s' opinions of the nature of existence, being perhaps a series of opposing dualities over which he had discovered he (magically) had the power to transform the very nature of and with it also his very form of existence, all of which could be put into practice and succeed greatly, but only if he consented to killing himself.
A message he may well have toyed with occurring on this forum post; was that as a human being, ‘Lyle’ to extinguish this 'c' and transform the entire nature of his very existence which he saw in his mind as a progression, an evolution of life as a human being into that of an altered and more highly advanced life form, above that of only recognizing the state of existence from being composed of a set of rigid reaction response actions that the human body makes to mimic psychically the reflection of what those chemicals that cause emotions do to ones own brain, en mass in society.
In 'Lyle' this 'transformation of self' would have been attained through a form of 'transference' had as opposed to his direct opposite freeform electronic algorithm brainwave that he had killed himself to become by having been clever enough to intrigue someone with the suicide mystery with which he’d inspire unmistakable evidence, an evidence of an action by him that symbolized clearly that he had inspired someone of the future to imagine and record (in public and in words) and in doing so to actually endorse the existence of, in a very real, yet transformed form of himself, all of it combined in a gesture- a comment by 'Lyle' that in the universal sense of the notion that 'All men are considered equal…' that is, we are all composed of 'c' and so are as one being.
There was a freedom 'Lyle'd' always been suspicious of but secretly even admired and respected at times and he valued his and the others he saw as his own, a self respect reliant upon his belief in part of his adopted country's proclaimed ways of treating people fairly, with equality, dignity, justly, and rightly.
His freedom was charted in the American constitution and in its societal administration being perhaps that: the light, the 'c' that in ‘Lyle’s' mind he'd seen exterminated around him as the events of September the 11th, 2001 had caused quite a lot of nationalistic animosity in the USA during that particular week, as on a panic run, he’d caught a cross-country bus and seen too many angry and fearing eyes.
This we know he did earlier as he was seen at the bus terminal.
If he'd been thinking like this then it may also link his knowledge to that of an University degree level of knowledge about the subject of Physics, or something similarly to do with the physical mechanics of light, therefore he may have had some associations even to the actual university where the writer of the book, 'You Must Remember This' had studied or engaged in any other university activities in any other educational or other public displays of her work or where ever else she may had have publically presented her persona?
This woman, Carol Joyce Oates, as an illustrious example of a prize-winning writer whose prose in this novel i keep mentioning, is themed with a strong American female character associated in a dark world in which she yields and around her the central theme of a character is created that has an inner strength that allows her to understand and rationalize something brutal that occurs within the plot of the novel, ‘You Must Remember This’?
It’s most likely this chronicler of inner urban American social life, typical au naturale has been recognized as such and so must have given a number of public lectures at various US and possibly other overseas universities and within other domestic assemblies throughout the aforementioned areas, places in which ‘Lyle’ may have made contact with her as a speaker on some public occasion such as a book signing, most likely as someone that she met just met once and to whom he was just a smiling nobody, )and I'd say she was never expecting the notoriety he was seeking to create for himself by using her book as his vehicle!), as he had assumed, and that he knew that someone, somewhere, would have to be forced to write down somewhere to explain to everyone else who came after him on an internet mystery solving forum for others seeking some notion of an answer to the questioning thought of the answer )if it even existed) to a single, simple, possible solution or answer as to what ever insane reason one could ever really give in reply to a call, of such a devastating an answer, to an equally so very dire a question, as that madness which drove ‘Lyle’ to make his decision, so gruesome?
Perhaps, there is a university where Ms Oates was tenured for some time to and to which ‘Lyle’ might have made an intimate association?
If she, Carol Joyce Oates, was tenured for some time and in the one constant location, who knows, she may know this man?
Contact with Ms Oates may well yield more.
I believe that the ‘psychologically loaded’ previous address he gave to the motel ledger as, 'Progress' st. with its logistically plan related provocative term intrinsic nature in the themes within its title, is in no way coincidental and also lends itself an insight into the mind of 'Lyle'.
It shows that in choosing to and, (if he ever was) living on this street, then he felt that he was psychologically making progress with his plan to create this internet mystery surrounding him by method of his suicide plan and it was also, indeed deliberately, and certainly done to indicate and illustrate that this was all part of a plan by ‘Lyle’ to do exactly this.
As ‘Lyle’ left us with nothing but these few sparse clues, the greatest of which is the link to the book, ‘You Must Remember This’, then it is also obviously significant that there is a famous ballad from which the novel I have written so many times the title of and from which itself borrows its title, ‘You must Remember This’ and this is the famed theme song from the 1944 film, ‘Casablanca’. You know the one.
This song not so surprising also contains a fitting line that itself may well serve as another clue and it is an obviously confirming connection that endorses that our search along these lines are all along the correct path.
These ideas with which we have dealt with her are all of a very sophisticated nature and yet relate to things that are readily understood by many people in almost the most simplistic of terms and notions.
The people who are at genius level in these modes of thought often suffer from major depressive illnesses. That’s what I’m fairly certain was what was going 'no' with ‘Lyle’ to some lesser or greater extent or in some subconsciously underlying extent of another.
It’s like being cool at chess at parties. Someone who understands the language of their sophistication at the highest levels and who can equally see, as simply in those most simple of the two disciplines temporally aware only of their separation in the mind correlate their intrinsic identical similarities in the one mind is someone to whom the equation becomes an unsound reality in which to exist as the lines of consciousness here can begin to blur and the interchanges between the separate two realities, interchangeable as they so often can be, they then, over a period of days, weeks, or years begin to disappoint the mind, in that these worlds themselves were not as appealing as those that could exist really did exist with full immersion capabilities of the consciousness in that created in the minor electric power outage in ‘Lyle’s’ otherwise 100000 watt city 1000 bulb blinker real in the imaginary of ‘Lyle’s’ worlds and he liked it better in the other world, that is, not the one I’m talking to you in. In ‘Lyle’s’ mind, the other worlds, the worlds not of the aging, wearing, real-flesh repeating world of actual people where it is the complete, bleak exact opposite of what it is like in most great books where ‘the world’ is somewhat more glamorous. Movies and books all of in which it must always be, as with CJO’s novels, that the stories deal with all of the unhinged irrepressed social horror stories of the twentieth century but all bleakly pleasanted-out and into flippant ambivalences that become great as among men there are those that deal solely and uncompromisingly with the disappointments of all the sad breaks one can actually get to in life, as it so often actually is with everyone, sooner or later.
If it were in any way in the mind of ‘Lyle’ relating to the reality that we, those reading the story that he knew in his mind’s eye, that someone somewhere might have figured out about the actual goings on of a mind which was set to suicide, (but with a plan), and that was that he was not planning on living any more in the world of ‘the actual’ but was going to swap his temporal existence for one which would be created on an internet real life mysterious investigation forum post in the period of time after the end of ‘Lyle’s’ life in a period of history where people would gather in communities around a mystery solving website of the future, that he’d imagined the very words of.
This future. It would not be unacceptable to have for an example of a delusion that Lyle’s mind may have had within it was one very much like this; his mind, having already over-stepped psychologically into the fictional mind of the perpetually suicidal character ‘Lyle’, he may have come to accept that it was a complete reality for him and that there was an option that was offered, a warranty implied within, if he were to do die in the manner that he had conceived of, then he would cease to exist in the glum glare of the ‘real’ and would have an existence that was, to his mind in a algorithmic quantum physical sense, one in which he would exist both as tangibly real and as fully cognitive, and existing as a collection of electrical frequencies in the spines of electromagnetic electricity and to swap that existence for one within the actual mainframe of the internet itself.
With the attractive idea therein the mind of ‘Lyle’ and with the knowledge of such a thing being in a every real possible existence in the confines of ‘Lyle’s mind, and that would be that he would swap the life in which he was now in for a life that would be created by his own arrangement in all of the electronic signals that could exist within the frequencies of the interplays of the electrical interfaces from the intermixing and transfer of slabs of knowledge and other various circuit board burrs of electrical energy accumulation that the interconnected grid of this, the electronic mass communications machine in which he would create for himself an existence.
It sounds mad because it is.
He was setting for himself a place, center-stage in the middle of the keyboard monitor lights and cameras the star role of the greatest self murder mystery never written and, all of this he himself now witnessing in a future existence as an electromagnetic frequency somehow still alive by the sheer fact that these words describing him would exist somewjere inside a computer in cyberspace where he has exchanged and changed the form of his life force to hide within the packets of data sent by wires through space from orbiting satellite to under oceanic communications cable to laptop on wireless on the top of windy old Sam Smith hill in Winter on a Friday right out at the furthest reach of the outposts of human habitation on this earth and with knowledge of this in either his conscious or subconscious, on it drove him, onward to his goal. His story, but how much of it would he be able to bring to the minds of the authors?
The other day they mentioned it on the radio. There was a word that meant, ‘the pleasure derived from the imagination of the spoils of a success that has not yet occurred.’
That was, ‘Lyle’s Syndrome’ I thought.
These were things which a man of genius level thinking would have easily imagined was the obvious future for western civilization. It was obvious the progression of the society into which the future was headed was one where mass communications data storage and transmission devices would be the ongoing most prevalent mainstay for the human race. That was obvious to anyone in 2001.
Of all of the communications of mankind and where with perhaps a mention of the unnecessary nature and duplicitous purposeful uses by the Administrative bodies that run Corporation Earth he’d even get a dig at them.
He man who was ‘Lyle’ I believe lived a large portion of his life within specialist books and loved their ‘world’.
Perhaps, he didn’t like them anymore because the internet had made them redundant? Perhaps he’d read a few ‘fiction’ books, such as ‘You Must Remember This’? (We know that’s likely), it could have been that given his disposition the horrors of the emotionally decimating characters scouring away at the readers mind as he is propelled layer under saddening layer of rotten onion skin subplots that just make you want to cry,‘Why does it have to be like that?’ and, as ‘Lyle’ even then as he was a small boy of eight he was of a nervous, yet brilliant and moreover (and most importantly) of a sensitive nature and disposition, however had he possibly found this change of world view image given him from the medium of this particular novel, a somewhat distasteful and depressing outlook upon the future?
Perhaps, so offended by Ms Oatte’s talk of woe that when was he as a boy of eight, hanging in a hammock on a Summer’s afternoon, reclining on cushions on clouds of air and crickets springing he’d read that entire particular novel whilst, as his natural dim smile turned to a natural dim frown as he lay there, eating small, red, sweet, late summer apples all afternoon and very neatly planting creating within his mind a spring of bad plants, the seeds of a rotten tree and including the weed of depression in his boy's mind?
To escape so his consciousness in this world forced to not live in the old world of the books 'Lyle' found himself reduced to another world where we’re all living in that mundane seat of your pants, chalk drawing of a naked lady on the boxing ring floor, newspaper, midnight silent light click of all the alarm clocks in the world where perhaps neither you nor I nor I expect 'Lyle' didn’t really like either and didn’t want to be trapped within this version of reality?
If 'Lyle' knew he could alter his reality (as it I was possible in his mind and he wanted to swap his role in the real world for one in the virtual world, in his mind of the past imagining this, according to his theory, actually existing in the thought created that you are currently reading.
And I have to say, alone at night in a house on top of a very tall hill in the woods tonight I have at times almost sensed the man’s mind looking at me and into this room.
Could it be more obvious?
‘The fundamental things apply… as time goes by.’
Doubleplus Thanks to D.C. for the whole light theory thing.

 

[Snarky247]

Regarding Lyle & 9/11...There were many Americans who were impacted by the tragedy who did not live in NYC or Washington DC. Perhaps Lyle lost a loved one on a flight, in the towers or at the Pentagon. Or he was simply pushed over the edge by the overwhelming demonstration of man's ability to destroy each other.
This is FAR from scientific evidence, but as a woman with a degree in Theatre & many, many gay friends, my first thought seeing Lyle's face was that he looked like a lot of gay men I know (his more feminine features could be the result of excess estrogen, which some believe leads to men being gay). So maybe he was gay & 9/11 had nothing to do with it.
No matter what the reason for his suicide, it just makes me sad that a young man felt there was no other option than suicide. And it really breaks my heart that one of his last acts was to leave money to cover the room expenses - that tells me he was a caring person with a conscience.

 

[outofthedark]

Criminal organizations have easily smuggled people out of life or death war zones, as they did for example in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian war in the early nineties.
When they did it was especially children, I would say he may have been a baby or a very young boy then, so 'Lyle' may have been one of these refugees who entered the USA or Canada as an orphan who went by an assumed name, was paid under the counter and was therefore essentially an underground ‘non-existent’ citizen? When 9/11 happened he may have seen the walls closing in?
However morose, it is interesting to note that 'Lyle' hanged himself in a wardrobe, a place devoid of light in a room which I'd suggest was probably not lit when those who discovered him entered it, meaning that he died in the dark and then deliberately in the darkest part of the room.
He also asked to be moved into the middle of the motel, under the premise that he was disturbed by the all night parties of the establishment across the road.
He had himself moved into the middle of the motel where it would be darkest.
This clue has something to do with the extinguishing of light and may be another deliberate sign?
The name our 'Lyle' chose as a surname, 'Stevik', is conspicuously absent of the letter 'c' that is present in the character’s name, 'Stevick'.
The letter ‘c’ is the mathematical symbol for the speed of light/light in the science of physics.
In his name is this absence of that which is the mathematical symbol for 'light’ an action by ‘Lyle’ that he performed deliberately?
With the letter 'c' deliberately removed from his name as though a reference to that particular symbol’s representation of light, there may also be in this action a message.
This light 'Lyle' was planning to extinguish, his light, his ‘c’, the light that for him had ended, and had made things seem so dark and grim that he felt it necessary to take this light of his own life, ‘c’, from the world?
This clue occurs, possibly with the intention of pointing out the extinguishing of a light, (as it is often argued by physicists that 'c' is an imprecise symbol for the 'constant': 'speed of light/light' and there is, (as you might imagine), the argument that light has varying speeds and wavelengths and so it should not be determined simply as ‘c’, a constant but as a variable. It's the nature of the variable that's causing the friction.
I believe that ‘Lyle’s was of the opposing argument.
The opposing argument is that light is that which takes all manner of forms, that it is of which we all are made from and are as a part, veritably composed of.
This is why these physicists argue that the symbol for the speed of light should not remain ‘c’ for ‘constant’.
In the context of this it might be surmised that ‘Lyle’s' opinions of the nature of existence, being perhaps a series of opposing dualities over which he had discovered he (magically) had the power to transform the very nature of and with it also his very form of existence, all of which could be put into practice and succeed greatly, but only if he consented to killing himself.
A message he may well have toyed with occurring on this forum post; was that as a human being, ‘Lyle’ to extinguish this 'c' and transform the entire nature of his very existence which he saw in his mind as a progression, an evolution of life as a human being into that of an altered and more highly advanced life form, above that of only recognizing the state of existence from being composed of a set of rigid reaction response actions that the human body makes to mimic psychically the reflection of what those chemicals that cause emotions do to ones own brain, en mass in society.
In 'Lyle' this 'transformation of self' would have been attained through a form of 'transference' had as opposed to his direct opposite freeform electronic algorithm brainwave that he had killed himself to become by having been clever enough to intrigue someone with the suicide mystery with which he’d inspire unmistakable evidence, an evidence of an action by him that symbolized clearly that he had inspired someone of the future to imagine and record (in public and in words) and in doing so to actually endorse the existence of, in a very real, yet transformed form of himself, all of it combined in a gesture- a comment by 'Lyle' that in the universal sense of the notion that 'All men are considered equal…' that is, we are all composed of 'c' and so are as one being.
There was a freedom 'Lyle'd' always been suspicious of but secretly even admired and respected at times and he valued his and the others he saw as his own, a self respect reliant upon his belief in part of his adopted country's proclaimed ways of treating people fairly, with equality, dignity, justly, and rightly.
His freedom was charted in the American constitution and in its societal administration being perhaps that: the light, the 'c' that in ‘Lyle’s' mind he'd seen exterminated around him as the events of September the 11th, 2001 had caused quite a lot of nationalistic animosity in the USA during that particular week, as on a panic run, he’d caught a cross-country bus and seen too many angry and fearing eyes.
This we know he did earlier as he was seen at the bus terminal.
If he'd been thinking like this then it may also link his knowledge to that of an University degree level of knowledge about the subject of Physics, or something similarly to do with the physical mechanics of light, therefore he may have had some associations even to the actual university where the writer of the book, 'You Must Remember This' had studied or engaged in any other university activities in any other educational or other public displays of her work or where ever else she may had have publically presented her persona?
This woman, Carol Joyce Oates, as an illustrious example of a prize-winning writer whose prose in this novel i keep mentioning, is themed with a strong American female character associated in a dark world in which she yields and around her the central theme of a character is created that has an inner strength that allows her to understand and rationalize something brutal that occurs within the plot of the novel, ‘You Must Remember This’?
It’s most likely this chronicler of inner urban American social life, typical au naturale has been recognized as such and so must have given a number of public lectures at various US and possibly other overseas universities and within other domestic assemblies throughout the aforementioned areas, places in which ‘Lyle’ may have made contact with her as a speaker on some public occasion such as a book signing, most likely as someone that she met just met once and to whom he was just a smiling nobody, )and I'd say she was never expecting the notoriety he was seeking to create for himself by using her book as his vehicle!), as he had assumed, and that he knew that someone, somewhere, would have to be forced to write down somewhere to explain to everyone else who came after him on an internet mystery solving forum for others seeking some notion of an answer to the questioning thought of the answer )if it even existed) to a single, simple, possible solution or answer as to what ever insane reason one could ever really give in reply to a call, of such a devastating an answer, to an equally so very dire a question, as that madness which drove ‘Lyle’ to make his decision, so gruesome?
Perhaps, there is a university where Ms Oates was tenured for some time to and to which ‘Lyle’ might have made an intimate association?
If she, Carol Joyce Oates, was tenured for some time and in the one constant location, who knows, she may know this man?
Contact with Ms Oates may well yield more.
I believe that the ‘psychologically loaded’ previous address he gave to the motel ledger as, 'Progress' st. with its logistically plan related provocative term intrinsic nature in the themes within its title, is in no way coincidental and also lends itself an insight into the mind of 'Lyle'.
It shows that in choosing to and, (if he ever was) living on this street, then he felt that he was psychologically making progress with his plan to create this internet mystery surrounding him by method of his suicide plan and it was also, indeed deliberately, and certainly done to indicate and illustrate that this was all part of a plan by ‘Lyle’ to do exactly this.
As ‘Lyle’ left us with nothing but these few sparse clues, the greatest of which is the link to the book, ‘You Must Remember This’, then it is also obviously significant that there is a famous ballad from which the novel I have written so many times the title of and from which itself borrows its title, ‘You must Remember This’ and this is the famed theme song from the 1944 film, ‘Casablanca’. You know the one.
This song not so surprising also contains a fitting line that itself may well serve as another clue and it is an obviously confirming connection that endorses that our search along these lines are all along the correct path.
These ideas with which we have dealt with her are all of a very sophisticated nature and yet relate to things that are readily understood by many people in almost the most simplistic of terms and notions.
The people who are at genius level in these modes of thought often suffer from major depressive illnesses. That’s what I’m fairly certain was what was going 'no' with ‘Lyle’ to some lesser or greater extent or in some subconsciously underlying extent of another.
It’s like being cool at chess at parties. Someone who understands the language of their sophistication at the highest levels and who can equally see, as simply in those most simple of the two disciplines temporally aware only of their separation in the mind correlate their intrinsic identical similarities in the one mind is someone to whom the equation becomes an unsound reality in which to exist as the lines of consciousness here can begin to blur and the interchanges between the separate two realities, interchangeable as they so often can be, they then, over a period of days, weeks, or years begin to disappoint the mind, in that these worlds themselves were not as appealing as those that could exist really did exist with full immersion capabilities of the consciousness in that created in the minor electric power outage in ‘Lyle’s’ otherwise 100000 watt city 1000 bulb blinker real in the imaginary of ‘Lyle’s’ worlds and he liked it better in the other world, that is, not the one I’m talking to you in. In ‘Lyle’s’ mind, the other worlds, the worlds not of the aging, wearing, real-flesh repeating world of actual people where it is the complete, bleak exact opposite of what it is like in most great books where ‘the world’ is somewhat more glamorous. Movies and books all of in which it must always be, as with CJO’s novels, that the stories deal with all of the unhinged irrepressed social horror stories of the twentieth century but all bleakly pleasanted-out and into flippant ambivalences that become great as among men there are those that deal solely and uncompromisingly with the disappointments of all the sad breaks one can actually get to in life, as it so often actually is with everyone, sooner or later.
If it were in any way in the mind of ‘Lyle’ relating to the reality that we, those reading the story that he knew in his mind’s eye, that someone somewhere might have figured out about the actual goings on of a mind which was set to suicide, (but with a plan), and that was that he was not planning on living any more in the world of ‘the actual’ but was going to swap his temporal existence for one which would be created on an internet real life mysterious investigation forum post in the period of time after the end of ‘Lyle’s’ life in a period of history where people would gather in communities around a mystery solving website of the future, that he’d imagined the very words of.
This future. It would not be unacceptable to have for an example of a delusion that Lyle’s mind may have had within it was one very much like this; his mind, having already over-stepped psychologically into the fictional mind of the perpetually suicidal character ‘Lyle’, he may have come to accept that it was a complete reality for him and that there was an option that was offered, a warranty implied within, if he were to do die in the manner that he had conceived of, then he would cease to exist in the glum glare of the ‘real’ and would have an existence that was, to his mind in a algorithmic quantum physical sense, one in which he would exist both as tangibly real and as fully cognitive, and existing as a collection of electrical frequencies in the spines of electromagnetic electricity and to swap that existence for one within the actual mainframe of the internet itself.
With the attractive idea therein the mind of ‘Lyle’ and with the knowledge of such a thing being in a every real possible existence in the confines of ‘Lyle’s mind, and that would be that he would swap the life in which he was now in for a life that would be created by his own arrangement in all of the electronic signals that could exist within the frequencies of the interplays of the electrical interfaces from the intermixing and transfer of slabs of knowledge and other various circuit board burrs of electrical energy accumulation that the interconnected grid of this, the electronic mass communications machine in which he would create for himself an existence.
It sounds mad because it is.
He was setting for himself a place, center-stage in the middle of the keyboard monitor lights and cameras the star role of the greatest self murder mystery never written and, all of this he himself now witnessing in a future existence as an electromagnetic frequency somehow still alive by the sheer fact that these words describing him would exist somewjere inside a computer in cyberspace where he has exchanged and changed the form of his life force to hide within the packets of data sent by wires through space from orbiting satellite to under oceanic communications cable to laptop on wireless on the top of windy old Sam Smith hill in Winter on a Friday right out at the furthest reach of the outposts of human habitation on this earth and with knowledge of this in either his conscious or subconscious, on it drove him, onward to his goal. His story, but how much of it would he be able to bring to the minds of the authors?
The other day they mentioned it on the radio. There was a word that meant, ‘the pleasure derived from the imagination of the spoils of a success that has not yet occurred.’
That was, ‘Lyle’s Syndrome’ I thought.
These were things which a man of genius level thinking would have easily imagined was the obvious future for western civilization. It was obvious the progression of the society into which the future was headed was one where mass communications data storage and transmission devices would be the ongoing most prevalent mainstay for the human race. That was obvious to anyone in 2001.
Of all of the communications of mankind and where with perhaps a mention of the unnecessary nature and duplicitous purposeful uses by the Administrative bodies that run Corporation Earth he’d even get a dig at them.
He man who was ‘Lyle’ I believe lived a large portion of his life within specialist books and loved their ‘world’.
Perhaps, he didn’t like them anymore because the internet had made them redundant? Perhaps he’d read a few ‘fiction’ books, such as ‘You Must Remember This’? (We know that’s likely), it could have been that given his disposition the horrors of the emotionally decimating characters scouring away at the readers mind as he is propelled layer under saddening layer of rotten onion skin subplots that just make you want to cry,‘Why does it have to be like that?’ and, as ‘Lyle’ even then as he was a small boy of eight he was of a nervous, yet brilliant and moreover (and most importantly) of a sensitive nature and disposition, however had he possibly found this change of world view image given him from the medium of this particular novel, a somewhat distasteful and depressing outlook upon the future?
Perhaps, so offended by Ms Oatte’s talk of woe that when was he as a boy of eight, hanging in a hammock on a Summer’s afternoon, reclining on cushions on clouds of air and crickets springing he’d read that entire particular novel whilst, as his natural dim smile turned to a natural dim frown as he lay there, eating small, red, sweet, late summer apples all afternoon and very neatly planting creating within his mind a spring of bad plants, the seeds of a rotten tree and including the weed of depression in his boy's mind?
To escape so his consciousness in this world forced to not live in the old world of the books 'Lyle' found himself reduced to another world where we’re all living in that mundane seat of your pants, chalk drawing of a naked lady on the boxing ring floor, newspaper, midnight silent light click of all the alarm clocks in the world where perhaps neither you nor I nor I expect 'Lyle' didn’t really like either and didn’t want to be trapped within this version of reality?
If 'Lyle' knew he could alter his reality (as it I was possible in his mind and he wanted to swap his role in the real world for one in the virtual world, in his mind of the past imagining this, according to his theory, actually existing in the thought created that you are currently reading.
And I have to say, alone at night in a house on top of a very tall hill in the woods tonight I have at times almost sensed the man’s mind looking at me and into this room.
Could it be more obvious?
‘The fundamental things apply… as time goes by.’
Doubleplus Thanks to D.C. for the whole light theory thing.

I enjoyed your post, but I had some trouble reading it.

 

[Ambercat]

I have been thinking a lot about the difference in spelling of Stevik (as opposed to Stevick in You Must Remember This) and I am wondering if the choice of the name Lyle Stevik doesn't really have a symbolic meaning, it was just he needed a name other than his own and it was the first one that he thought of when he got to the hotel. It is possible that "Lyle" hadn't read You Must Remember This and how he got the name was by asking someone else in his life (who was reading the book) about what they were reading and somehow the idea of that particular character stuck with him, but the spelling was just a guess how he thought Stevick would be spelled. Maybe he was trying to send a message to the person in his life reading You Must Remember This and not about the novel itself.

 

[outofthedark]

I have been thinking a lot about the difference in spelling of Stevik (as opposed to Stevick in You Must Remember This) and I am wondering if the choice of the name Lyle Stevik doesn't really have a symbolic meaning, it was just he needed a name other than his own and it was the first one that he thought of when he got to the hotel. It is possible that "Lyle" hadn't read You Must Remember This and how he got the name was by asking someone else in his life (who was reading the book) about what they were reading and somehow the idea of that particular character stuck with him, but the spelling was just a guess how he thought Stevick would be spelled. Maybe he was trying to send a message to the person in his life reading You Must Remember This and not about the novel itself.

I think too that there is no meaning behind his name. He could have just picked it out of a phone book.

 

[Ambercat]

After September 11, 2001, I think the INS began looking into people who had overstayed their visas and things of that nature where they hadn't before. I thought it was possible that they had asked "Lyle" to leave and maybe he was afraid of being deported or didn't want to go for any number of reasons.

 

[outofthedark]

After September 11, 2001, I think the INS began looking into people who had overstayed their visas and things of that nature where they hadn't before. I thought it was possible that they had asked "Lyle" to leave and maybe he was afraid of being deported or didn't want to go for any number of reasons.

What could have he used a visa for? I don't quite remember all the things visas are for

I know there are work visas, but that's about all that I can think of.

 

[9InchNails]

There are visas for tourists too, they can stay up to 3 months I think.

 

[outofthedark]

There are visas for tourists too, they can stay up to 3 months I think.

I remember that one now

 

[Ambercat]

I thought possibly a student visa. Somehow I see "Lyle" as a university student who did really bad on his most recent exams. Maybe that says more about me than him.

 

[outofthedark]

I thought possibly a student visa. Somehow I see "Lyle" as a university student who did really bad on his most recent exams. Maybe that says more about me than him.

An exchange student on a Canada - USA program?

 

[necco]

I thought possibly a student visa. Somehow I see "Lyle" as a university student who did really bad on his most recent exams. Maybe that says more about me than him.

Unless he was in summer session, he wouldn't have taken exams for months. If he was found in June or December, I'd buy that theory. JMO

 

[9InchNails]

Unless he was in summer session, he wouldn't have taken exams for months. If he was found in June or December, I'd buy that theory. JMO

I wouldn't be so positive about that. A former classmate killed himself a few years ago. He had been depressed for a while, even more after failing his baccalaureat and having to repeat the last year of high school. His sisters were very studious and successful in their studies and his parents put pressure on him because of his bad results. And yet he took his life several months after failing his exam.

That said, I don't think bad results on an exam would be the only reason for Lyle to kill himself in a remote hotel under a false name and without any identification, but it could be one of the reasons why he was severely depressed.

 

[outofthedark]

That said, I don't think bad results on an exam would be the only reason for Lyle to kill himself in a remote hotel under a false name and without any identification, but it could be one of the reasons why he was severely depressed.

I think it had to be a more severe situation for him. I'm leaning towards years of abuse. It sounds like something was pent up for a very long time, and then something finally caused him to snap.