What price suicide?

My lady friend has gone back to where she lives and the house echoes with relative emptiness once more.

For the first few days was almost chirpy.. I had my 'personal space' back, and could 'disorganise' it in any way that I chose. (I tend to live in 'organised chaos' and she kept 'tidying up', so that when I went to find something in 'the pile', it wasn't there.. arrrrgh!!)

Now? .. weelll, think I miss her. No lights on when I come home from work, no meal half prepared, waiting for my arrival. No diminutive figure stooped by negative influence and the onset of osteoporosis, sitting at the kitchen table with ever-present cigarette and glass of wine ready to tell me how rotten I am. No hint of twinkly Irish eyes hiding behind her sour face. No warm body in the bed to kiss and cuddle, and share the intimacy of skin.

She has returned to her dry, barren life with a pompous, incompetent, obnoxious English husband in another state (Queensland .. heh, could make many snide double entendres about that). The Roman church indoctrination of 'marriage' being a "Life Sentence; with Hard Labour". For her, far too ingrained.

There is much detail that am excluding. We have been 'together' since I met her in 1991, but physical contact has been limited to a couple of months each year when she comes to visit. Have been steadily chipping away at the shackles with a meta phorical blacksmith's chisel, but don't ask me to describe 'love', have no idea what it really means.

What really prompted this was this comment on "the Executioner's Thong"

"smokes killed my dad. he knew that in the back of his mind, the rest of us saw it coming in a more conscious way.

I finally did get in to see "Thank you for not smoking". It is funny but not nearly edgy enough. It mostly skewers the hypocrisy of the industries that profit from death and addiction and use the profits to support massive lobbying but it also leaves a little room for the claim that the use of guns, alcohol and tobacco is also a matter of personal choice. Only in the strictest sense can I agree with that; like saying suicide is a personal choice."

The movie is not even trying to be particularly objective or accurate about the kinds of people who oppose smoking."

Suicide IS a personal choice. Just like getting out of bed, or going to work in the morning, or going to the pub, lighting a cigarette, putting that 'extra' coin in the pokie machine, turning the key on a motor vehicle and taking it out of the driveway, climbing a mountain, taking a "thrill" ride at the Fair.... etc, etc.. We calculate the risks.

Conception, in the genetic sense, is NOT a choice that we, as individuals, make .. two other humans make it for us.

Being expelled from the womb is NOT a choice that we, as individuals, make..
Concoctions of hormones make that for us.

From then on, awareness of surroundings develops, and WE BEGIN TO MAKE CHOICES. Should I express discomfort, should I stay silent. If I grasp that object, will it hurt. If I stand up, will I fall over.

Action and reaction operate from then on, and life is a series of 'learning' exercises.

Suicide can be quick and final: or a long, slow, calculated progression toward the ultimate end of a body's time.
Whether we like it or not.. Death is NOT a choice.

Suicide is a personal choice.

Until we can give our children a clear choice, the choice between living a long life .. or quick death, they will continue to .. use drugs, drink alcohol, smoke, drive fast cars, test their 'limits' .. any of the "illegal" or "legal" and sociologically accepted choices towards suicide ..

Is it better to spend time, effort and money building a bigger, better, higher, and stronger .. FENCE at the edge of the cliff? ..


or on teachers, education, schoolhouses and stable families .. and leave the edge open to those who need to choose that option?

I sometimes take the most extraordinary 'risks', (at least in my mind) but they are relatively small, and built on solid calculation. I may not be able to understand the "science" of 'calculus', but I know that my brain is a myriad of neurons, all interacting. I know the risks. I choose to gamble with "The Executioner".

(an interesting aside re the human brains 'calculation' of trajectories. One of the reasons that good 'spin' bowlers in cricket are so successful, is that at some point the brain is unable to accurately calculate curved or erratic trajectories.)

The game of cricket and tennis, of course, only operate in the 'real' or physical world. The 'spin' doctors only operate in metaphysical or psychological realms.

A newborn child begins to formulate physical choices. Light; dark. Comfort; discomfort. Action, reaction.

I have choices.

(and, as a cynical old basket, those choices have nothing to do with the concept "Christianity". If ya wanna be a "Joshua - ist" might listen.