Adios – Last Basement Tape

everlasting-contrast:

Approximately 10:30 a.m. (Mountain Time), Eric’s house

 Harris: Say it now.

Klebold:  Hey mom. Gotta go. It’s about a half an hour before our little judgment day. I just wanted to apologize to you guys for any crap this might instigate as far as [inaudible] or something.

Just know I’m going to a better place. I didn’t like life too much and I know I’ll be happy wherever the fuck I go. So I’m gone. Good-bye.       Reb …

Dylan takes the camera then and begins filming Eric. Eric’s also wearing a plaid shirt that’s either dark blue or black with white, with a white t-shirt on underneath. His lower half can’t be seen.

Harris: Yeah… Everyone I love, I’m really sorry about all this. I know my mom and dad will be just like … just fucking shocked beyond belief. I’m sorry, all right. I can’t help it.

Klebold: [interrupts] We did what we had to do.

Harris: (Chris) Morris, Nate (Dykeman), if you guys live, I want you guys to have whatever you want from my room and the computer room.

Dylan adds that they can have his things as well.

Harris: Susan [Dewitt], sorry. Under different circumstances it would’ve been a lot different. I want you to have that Fly CD.

Harris: That’s it. Sorry. Goodbye.

Klebold: [sticks his face in the camera]
                                 
GOODBYE.

The tape ends with a brief glimpse of a sign on the wall of Eric’s bedroom, someone’s arm partially blocking it from sight. It’s the letters CHS along with a drawing of a bomb with a lit fuse and, in bold black letters, the word “clue.”

“The last segment was the shortest one. It was also the most difficult for me. In it, the boys  pause to say a few words of farewell before going over to the school to carry out their plan. Supplies are piled around them, as if they are heading out on an expedition. Eric tells his family how they should distribute his possessions.

Dylan does not utter an angry word or speak of hatred or vengeance. He makes no mention of the death and destruction to come. There is none of the braggadocio of the previous tapes. He does not cry, either; his affect is flat, resigned. Whatever else he intends to do, he is going to the school to end his own life.

He looks away from the camera, as if speaking only to himself.

Then he says softly, “Just know I’m going to a better place. I didn’t like life too much….”

Watching this, I had to bite my lip to stop myself from screaming, Stop! Stop! Don’t go. Don’t leave me! Don’t do this. Don’t hurt those people. Give me a chance to help you! Come back.But wherever he was, Dylan couldn’t hear me anymore.”

–Sue Klebold – A Mother’s Reckoning

Do u think Dylan intentionally left clues for his parents to find after his death which would suggest he was depressed as a way of telling them?

Well, the only thing that Dylan may have left behind as “clues” was his writings which as Sue reiterated in interviews, were not part of a complete “journal” or book as everyone tends to think – but pieces of paper that he wrote his thoughts on to as part of his school spiral Mead notebooks or a bit jotted in his day planner or scraps of writing on paper he’d tucked in a calendar (she mentioned this in particular). I do think since Dylan wiped his computer hard drive, it wouldn’t have been too hard for him to collect his personal writings on bits of paper and burned them or disposed of them but for some reason, he decided to leave them behind. I do believe it was intentional that he left them as bread crum trails of ‘goodbyes’ for his family to discover so as they may have a little better understanding of his personal plight and decision to leave this place.

Was this just a cover >> a day before the massacre, Dylan Klebold, Dustin Gorton, a junior, and Eric Jackson, a senior, filmed a “Breakfast” video called “American Dream” for a school project since Dylan was concerned about his grades

I guess you could call it “a cover” sure. But I don’t think Dylan did/said these sorts of things in a particularly

Machiavellian sort of way.  Dylan continued to live life all the way up to the very day they’d planned to go NBK and so it was pretty easy to live within the context of that grounded reality-based realm and operate as though his life were to continue on seamlessly. His grades were dipping and he’d been struggling with that the last few months. Reiterating that to a friend again one last time was not particularly unusual to express in idle chat.   I think it’s partly being in the middle of the everyday minutia and saying and doing things as if life may..might..will go on tomorrow but there’s also another part of himself that is in a bit of denial. Maybe something would stop it/them and maybe life really would go on?  Or not.. He’d leave it in Fate’s capable hands and no longer worry about “human things”.

NBK did not become a full reality until the two were actually there a top the hill at the Southwest entrance, pulling out their weapons and shooting at people.  By that point, the metaphorical train tracks of their lives switched to a new future, a fated timeline, that would end in destruction as well as their own ruin and in just under an hour. April 19th was not the day the world was going to come to an end – nope. But tomorrow would, they just stalled or suspended those thoughts off in their minds somewhat to get through the last few days.  By the morning of April 20th, that “today” would be the day the world was going to come to an end, that was the day they, and others, would die.

everlasting-contrast:

“Love is more valuable than anything I know. To

love is to enter a completion of oneself.

I hate those who choose to destroy a love, who

take it for granted. love is greater than life even.

As I look for love, I feel i can’t find it. ever. but

something tells me i will someday. somewhere. As

my love will find me, She feels as i do right now,

i can feel it. we will be inseparable, Her & i.

Whether it is (___) or not, i think i’ll find it,

(my love). we will be free to explore the vast wonders

of the stars. To cascade down everlong waterfalls, &

thru the warmest seas of pure happiness…no limits…

no limits, nothing will stop us.”

— Dylan Klebold

Circa April 1999

everlasting-contrast:

Hand Signals Practice for NBK

enemy – fist   (fist symbol)

                               or hand shake  10, 20, fl .= dist

hold fire  (diagram for gesture)

Suicide – gun to head

fall back (diagram for gesture)

??            (diagram for gesture)

unload – victory scream

cover fire

Bombs – fist wave

———–

enemy – (finger # for direction)

hold fire  (diagram for gesture)

have fun  _?_load)

take course –

fall back –

follow me –

self distruct ( ? sign er will do – so ?)

Bombs away

Columbine was the result of the accidental meeting of two completely different boys who happened to form one disastrous combination: one boy who wanted to commit mass murder and was willing to die to get what he wanted; one boy who wanted to die and was willing to commit mass murder to get his wish. The arrest brought them together, their culture encouraged them, their environment did not stop them.

Wij Zijn Maar Wij Zijn Niet Geschift (We Are But We Are Not Psycho)

, Tim Krabbé

everlasting-contrast:

I know that I am different..

The framework of society stands above & below me.
The hardest thing to destroy, yet the
weakest thing that exists.  I know that i am different,
yet i am afraid to tell the society.  The possible
abandonment, persecution is not something I want to
face, yet it is so primitive to me.  I guess being
yourself means letting people know about inner thoughts
too, not just opinions & fashions.(heheh) I will
be free one day, in the land of purity & my happiness.
I will have a love, someone who is me in a way, Someday…
Possibly thru this life, maybe another, but it will happen….
-Dylan Klebold

Circa February-ish ‘99