Great, I can't even get THAT right.
I read books sometimes and this book of short stories referenced a movie called Taste of Cherry, an Iranian movie about a guy who drives around looking for someone to fill the hole with 20 shovelfuls of dirt the morning after he lies in it and takes a suicidal amount of sleeping pills. I had no idea, this movie! There must be a Jungian connection to the format, of reclining into earth, of relinquishing ourselves back from whence we sprang. Which, duh, cemeteries. But to even ourselves consciously opt this ultimate oneness to source, that we agree on the terms source.
My own holdup had indeed been that final burial. It never occurred to me to solicit the task. I wouldn't, it is a contradiction to my intent, my craving need to anonymously disappear disallows it. But I like that he could look up at the moon on his way out whereas my plan puts me too deep in the lair for a view, but of course I am already deep in my lair so it will be more like a comfortable home-sweet-home.
With his final attempt at a wing - er - shovel man, we get this soliloquy about the merits of continuing on, even at this late stage of decision.
"I reached the mulberry tree plantations. I stopped there. It was still dark. I threw the rope over a tree but it didn't catch hold. I tried once, twice, but to no avail. So then I climbed the tree and tied the rope on tight. Then I felt something soft under my hand. Mulberries. Deliciously sweet mulberries. I ate one. It was succulent, then a second and third. Suddenly, I noticed that the sun was rising over the mountaintop. What sun, what scenery, what greenery! All of a sudden, I heard children heading off to school. They stopped to look at me. They asked me to shake the tree. The mulberries fell and they ate. I felt happy. Then I gathered some mulberries to take them home. My wife was still sleeping. When she woke up, she ate mulberries as well. And she enjoyed them too. I had left to kill myself and I came back with mulberries. A mulberry saved my life. A mulberry saved my life."
"You ate mulberries, so did your wife, and everything was fine."
"No, it wasn't like that, but I changed. Afterwards, it was better, but I had in fact changed my mind. I felt better. Every man on earth has problems in his life. That's the way it is. There are so many people on earth. There isn't one family without problems. I don't know your problem, otherwise I could explain better…My dear man, your mind is ill but there's nothing wrong with you. Change your outlook. I had left home to kill myself but a mulberry changed me, an ordinary, unimportant mulberry. The world isn't the way you see it. You have to change your outlook and change the world. Be optimistic. Look at things positively. You're in your prime! Because of some minor problem you want to commit suicide. For one single problem. Life is like a train that keeps on moving forward and then reaches the end of the line, the terminus. And death waits at the terminus. Of course, death is a solution but not at first, not during your youth … Have you lost all hope? Have you ever looked at the sky when you wake in the morning? At dawn, don't you want to see the sun rise? The red and yellow of the sun at sunset, don't you want to see that anymore? Have you seen the moon? Don't you want to see the stars? The night of the full moon, don't you want to see it again? You want to close your eyes? … Don't you ever want to drink water from a spring again? Or wash your face in that water? … If you look at the four seasons each season brings fruit. In summer, there's fruit, in autumn too. Winter brings different fruit and spring too. No mother can fill her fridge with such a variety of fruit for her children. No mother can do as much for her children as God does for His creatures. You want to refuse all that? You want to give it all up? You want to give up the taste of the cherries? Don't. I'm your friend, I'm begging you! We barely know each other. You go, I'm your friend. You stay, I'm your friend. In any case, I'm your friend. You stay, I'm your friend. You go, I'll be your friend too. Good-bye."
There's a lot to unpack here. Like, A LOT. There's a lot about suicide, what it is, and mental health, how we've opted to present all of it, the narrative we've decided - versus what it really is. Or what it is to me, anyhoo. How I've been lumped into the going rate, we don't even get to die on our own terms.
There's an ad for some mental health app, and it features a person who states, "Sometimes I feel worthless, like everything's my fault. But then my dad told me - "
(cut to dad) "Just smile more."
We cut back to the woman with a dubious smile over which the screen then reads, "That's unhelpful"
Solution: download the app and get real mental health assistance.
OK, that sometimes you feel worthless, like everything's your fault? WELL YEAH, FFS, this is what life is, there's nothing mental health about it, its called normal. And by spinning all our normal doubts, anxieties, fears, concerns, our entire arc, for chrissake, of the human experience, into the mental health judgement machine, WE'RE DOOMED.
The church systemized this, they fucked it up before anyone knew what pants were and now this bs. The single most destructive entity in the whole life experience is organized religion. The Church. It invented judgment. Before that it was all just life. The arc of this bizarre and amazing thing called life on a floating planet in space that gives us 7,500 varieties of apples, forget everything else, birds, flowers, cats, pizza. What the fuck IS THIS ANYWAY? But we're here and it all just IS, and it'd be pretty amazing, actually, but no one was making money off that so we created angst. Take every single arc of the human experience and divide it and declare one of those desirable and the other undesirable. Deciding that the arc from happiness - sadness is only 50% acceptable, and which segment of that arc qualifies as the attractive 50%. We've done this with everything, everything we experience. We've divided it all, we've declared good or evil, and we've decided which is which. Yaddayaddayadda, please buy the app, now, for the way we've made you feel, for the way we've made you believe in the wrongness of your natural life experience and that it's something to be saved from. By us, of course. Whoever is selling. God, apps.
You feel like it's all your fault? No, don't just smile more, but also, embrace it. Learn how to live with it, because it's part of the experience, as legit as the pretty part where you feel invincible and indestructible. It's all part of it. Some feels great, some have less endorphins, oh well, life goes on and this is life. Figure out how to make it work for you. Don't buy in to the prevailing expectations of what is normal, healthy, legitimate.
I know there is true mental illness in the world that needs to be seriously addressed and worked with. This isn't that. Do I even have depression or do I just see the world this way? Like should it be called Reality instead of Depression? Depression has NEVER made me feel lousy; the assigned judgment of depression does. If depression is my story, I can't just have my story. It's been judged undesirable, something to treat, medicate, euthanize. I happen to like my depression. I've found ways to make it work for me, to work on my behalf. The assigned narrative of depression has caused more damage to me than the actual depression.
But back to the grand speech above. So, yes, empty proverbs and sayings like "Be optimistic. Look at things positively" are, like, duh. Like that never occurred to a person uncertain about their emotions. Within the context of the entire speech, I can mildly concede the place for this. Versus my twitter feed when someone posts the random, "You are loved!" "You matter!"*
*(Christ I hate that vapid shit.)
We never know why the gentleman in the movie wants to kill himself. But I have thought about that
monologue the last week or so and this I do know. I KNOW what he is saying is correct, and I am happy for his character that he found his way to it, that it was even there for him to find. That it was there ENOUGH for him to latch onto. It is not for everyone, it is not for me.
I covered my love of being here a few posts back. Every day, I love. Every day I at least smile and sometimes I get the bonus of laughing, even if it is something stupid generated by me. I eat good food every day and never am not aware how amazing it is, that it exists for us, that we get to have it. I have things to do, too much, but mostly have the great fortune of usually having nothing to do at all and getting to make art. I experience happiness every day. I have great moments of content every day. I am not mentally ill, I don't just need to smile, I will commit suicide when it's time. I will do that, regardless all these things that are love, because I understand something fundamental. That I am not special. That I am of a species that seems to have dominated this Eden but is not necessarily the prevailing or superior species, only the one that thinks it is. I am connected to love that is at constant mercy and compromise by the lowest common denominator of my own species. It is not only the connection that is lost, the love itself, it is the pageantry of loss I powerlessly witness in silence every day that is simply wearing. Like watching the most beautiful painting in the world, and one so deeply meaningful, be systematically scratched away, little by little, by some disgusting asshole who owns everything because he exploits loopholes.
Expectations too high? YES! But it is not just this, this is only aesthetics. The gentleman in the movie found his connection. Despite all my micro-connections, truly satisfying and meaningful, I still understand they are in some way smoke and mirror to an underlying truth. I am an aging man alone who will have to work until he can no longer stand or breathe, and will maybe be able to continue to afford living. This is a miserable prognosis, this is worse than Trump scratching away a Basquiat, methodically, inch-by-inch, just because he can. It is anathema to the very concept of life, its antonym on two feet. Much better to go out with something left, some love, than to witness it drain to nothing at the bequest of a dull other.
Were Dr. Phil to espouse the merits of resisting suicide, I would think this is a very good example of why I might want to commit suicide. But I was listening to Nick Cave's song Push the Sky Away (great album) and this is a guy who could give me pause. And his lyric is correct, maybe I've simply got everything I came for, and it's that easy. Why do we have such an unyielding stance that pushing the sky away is the, THE, action to achieve? Why ARE we so suicide-opposed? Why isn't suicide another natural option on the arc of life and death? It is, but it's deemed, it's been assigned, The Big NO on the mental health scale. It is the final straw of mental health gone wrong. I live in the wrong world, I can't find myself here. I have no others here. I don't connect to this story, and I look forward to my meeting with the sky.
