-The Art of Creative Suicide-

Sometimes we all have to die. A couple of times a year, to be exact. Sometimes we must say goodbye to ourselves, and kiss off to a new world, leaving the old as smoke leaves fire. Sometimes, we have to kill ourselves.

Why not? It’s not as though any of us has anything particularly good going on. Nothing remarkably stupendous happening, most of the time. In this lull of life we can either pick ourselves up, or drop way down below. Sometimes, dropping is more fun.

Always, it’s the easier thing to do.

I myself can attest to the Art of Creative Suicide. It is a way of life for me. It is a way of death, as well. I take up so much over a period of time that I don’t know what to do with all these memories in my head and feelings unsorted. Then I remember. Then I fall. Then I die.

The Art of Creative Solutions, it could also be called.

The Art of Creative Suicide is the cleaners of all cleaners. The path of least resistance, because there’s nothing stopping you death. There’s not a pill on the market, or a parachute strong enough, to resist the pull of death, if you want to go. Dying we will be made whole again.

It’s the creative part that’s so much fun.

We have to die because, like sleep, we must take a break at some point in our lives. To go into a slumber and awaken from it fresh, clear, new. We can’t always be ourselves. That gets boring. That gets tired really fast, sometimes. We kill of ourselves, take a nap, and wake up again, better than before.

Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.

I do it all the time. I myself die every time I have to. Every time I begin to notice how I don’t like myself as much anymore. I notice the tiredness in my eyes, the slouch in my posture. The struggle to stay awake as my current self. Then I know I should move on. Then comes dying.

It’s remarkably simple.

For me, it’s as simple as black and white. Or gray on paper: I bleed when I write. My thoughts splurge from my mind as I force ideas from my brain the way I force blood from a pin-prick. I bleed when I write. I’m dying as I’m talking to you now.

This hemorrhaging is part of the process of continual recycling, from old to new to old again. It is also followed by a slight headache, maybe an aspirins worth, or two.

These simple things for me are my hara-kiri. My Geronimo from the cliff top. My kamikaze from the plane of life, and myself. I also go head-first, land where it is my brain leads me next.

I exhaust whatever ideas circulate inside my head. These last whispers, of me down on paper, last precious breaths of sanity, opinions, sarcasm, loves, hates, hunger, and pride. Parts of me that have gone stale, and ready to be purged and revisited again.

When the bleeding stops, so does the dying.

And when I awake, it is as if I’m a new man. I am, I am.

Like waking up after a great night’s sleep, like I’ve forgotten what happened the day before.

I’m not lying. This isn’t fiction. I bleed when I write, dying as my pencil dies over the fibers. Me and all my pencil dying, by moonlight. Only a pink eraser away from being forever forgotten. This is the price of creative dying. The Sacrifice that we are always lost as time ticks by. No one completely remembers yesterday, therefore all we truly are is what we make of today.

And sometimes we make ourselves something like new.

I’ve just realized, now, why I always get so sleepy when I’m almost done writing with my pencil. Just realized why I notice that peculiar light at the end....

 

By Don Bernal

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