Subject: Re: suicide
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Fri Feb 25 2000 - 19:45:12 EST
No answers or pronouncements from here re Seymour, Sainthood & Suicide (a
new law firm). But I would like to mention I once saw in a bookstore a
rather interesting volume titled _Japanese Death Poems_. Seems they liked
to compose a poem ( usually a haiku) just as death was approaching (some
might have had one stashed away just in case) and the disciples collected
them. If I'm not mistaken, even those who preferred suicide had pen and
paper ready.
Now Buddy (our disciple figure) mentions in _Seymour: an Intro_ that
Seymour, on the afternoon of his death, wrote a straight, classical-style
haiku, _in Japanese_, on the desk blotter in the hotel room. And he goes
on to give a rough prose translation. I defer to others to intrepret the
meaning of the poem.
But before exiting, once again I really recommend a re-read of an early-on,
but rather longish paragraph in _S:aI_, beginning "I'd like to start out
with some rather unstinting words about those two opening quotations." All
the way, several pages' worth, to the light-bulb-over-the-head "I say that
the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is
mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors
of his own sacred human conscience."
And if one still feels Seymour is a dolt, read the paragraph two down from
the one above, the paragraph beginning "Something, now--and briskly--... .
At the beginning I said no pronouncements, but allow a small, tendered
comment. It's this:
I imagine, I guess, I wistfully think or hope only God Himself (Whatever,
Whoever That Is) is in the position to render a judgment, to recalibrate a
life's meaning (if indeed it necessitates recalibration) when Suicide enters
the equation. It seems to me to be between Him and His Creation. Not us.
--Bruce
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