Sweet Bleaders,
I like this discussion about suicide that has been going on around here. You guys are wonderful and I'm proud to be working with you. So I'll say something else too. I think when people kill themselves it is like they open the back door on the plane and they accidently take some people with them. In a poem I've posted here I say if you shoot yourself you crack the bio-dome. (Here is The No Hemlock Rock on my blog in stanzas, I posted it here as a paragraph), I am prepared to insist that suicide should be morally forbidden is because it causes massive harm to the people who know you, and know of you, and know your work. Most of the great atheists in history have asserted our right to take our own life, but I don't side that way. They were emphasizing that we owe nothing to the universe, I am emphasizing that we owe this to each other.
One thing that predicts suicide a little is having suicide in the family already. If our community is in any way a family than what David said in his post has pretty much got to be true: Suicide is contagious. But it isn't respiratory, talking about it makes it less likely to fester and kill.
If you are dying and you want to hurry the thing up that's one thing, but if you just despise yourself and curse the air, tough tits, you have to stay.
Make art, make a mess, climb on the furniture. Scream and cry. But don't kill yourself, for the sake of everyone else. Please accept my thanks. Thank you for not killing yourself. I know how hard it is and I am grateful. Thank you for staying. Let's just owe that to each other.
You don't have to understand everything all the time, just note that we are all connected and that if you write and publish and post you exponentially increase the number of people who get their hearts all scarred up just because you didn't know how much harm it would do. So just don't. If you would like a written thank you note, I suppose something could be arranged.
Do you swoon for miss stevie smith (1902-1971)? of course you do. I think we could use a morsel of her or two.
First of all you should know this great poet story, so I'll remind: Coleridge always said that he wrote his great Kubla Khan after dreaming it in an opium-induced sleep, and that after he got a few stanzas down from this vivid dream a business man from the town of Porlock knocked on Coleridge's door and after their conversation ended, Coleridge went back to his desk, the dream had vanished. That is why the full title of the poem is "Kubla Khan; or A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment."
Okay, so here is the first part of smith's poem:
Person from Porlock
Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
And ever after called him a curse
Then why did he hurry to let him in?
He might have hid in the house.
It was not right of Coleridge
in fact it was wrong (But often we all do wrong)
As the truth is I think, he was already stuck
With Kubla Khan.
He was weeping and crying, I am finished, finished
I shall never write another word of it,
When along comes the Person from Porlock
And takes the blame for it.
It was not right it was wrong,
But often we all do wrong.
Smith then goes on the tumble around in her nursery rhymes for a few stanzas, and then:
I long for the
Person from Porlock To bring my
thoughts to an end I am becoming
impatient to see him I think of him as
a friend Often I look out
of the window Often I run to
the gate I think, He will
come this evening I think it is
rather late. I am hungry to be
interrupted For ever and ever
amen O Person from
Porlock come quickly And bring my
thoughts to an end. * I felicitate the
people who have a Person from Porlock To break up
everything and throw it away Because then
there will be nothing to keep them And they need not
stay. * Oh this Person
from Porlock is a great interrupter He interrupts us
for ever People say he is
a dreadful fellow But really he is
desirable. Why should they
grumble so much? He comes like
benison They should be
glad he has not forgotten them They might have
had to go on. * These thoughts
are depressing, I know. They are depressing. I wish I was more
cheerful it is more pleasant Also it is a
duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of
One Above who is experimenting With various
mixtures of human character which goes best All is
interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again.
Smile smile and get some work to do Then you will be
practically unconscious without positively having to go. --stevie smith Great isn't it? I think smith is advocating the idea that we must not kill ourselves because we have work to do -- when she's congratulates the people who are always being interrupted because they are not able to get any work done and because of that are able to: a) get up and leave their work and b) kill themselves, since in both cases, who cares since your not getting any work done anyway. She envies them this freedom. But then when she says why do people grumble, we sense she means why do people mind the coming of death? (which means that the person from Porlock is only figuratively the "interrupter" who stands for death, he is now actually death. Many people can't get themselves to do the art they wished they did. Such people do not know, says smith, that being able to stay at it is not salvation. And then there's that marvelous final stanza where you can almost feel her breath talking. She doesn't resolve much here, and she isn't certain anything is worth anything, and her big final advice is sad and weird. Yet what can I tell you. All is actually interesting and some of it is exciting, though I suppose I wouldn't mind a bit more of the good exciting and less of the ones that make you feel like you are a dead lion and a hive has built a honeycomb in your chest. It is interesting though. I think when she says it is only interesting to the eye that gazes at it without having to live it, and that is true in ways, at times, but still. Leave the justifications up to me, you just stay. From stevie to me to you, Smile, smile (or don't) and get some work to do, or do whatever you want to do to be unconscious without positively having to go. But don't drink and drive. love, Jennifer
