is it really worth killing yourself over?

1. I've got two brilliant ideas in my head at the same time, crowding each other, trying to develop. In my effort to write them down, they fizzle and my lack of brilliance is proved once again (or twice).

2. I have to stop taking S1's advice. Or anybody's. I don't have the same abilities of conversation or thoughtfulness to pull them off, and I'm left frustrated in real time with an uncomfortable situation.

3. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. As I lay there I thought about death, about suicide, wondered if a person could simply stop breathing, if they could avoid taking the next breath. Is it the functioning of the body that makes this impossible? Or is it the brain? I skipped a couple of breaths, then took one. I don't know if I could do this.

I thought about the most horrific vision of suicide I saw in the pictures I was looking at recently, a person who had sawed themself in half on a band saw, right above the hip bones. The only tough part would be the spine. But it seems like it would be quite painful -- though quicker -- cutting through the flesh and organs. I couldn't do this!

And to think of the noise! That would be the most unnerving part, I think, the high-pitched whir of the metal blade. The lower half of the body was left on the saw bench and the dead upper torso fell to the work table in front of the machine. To find the person who'd committed suicide like this would be awful, having to make your way to the OFF switch.

I'm fascinated by suicide. Maybe because I'm writing a novel about a character who dies. He doesn't commit suicide, not really, but in a way he does, a slow suicide, by letting a man fuck him without a condom. That's a kind of suicide.

Smoking seems to be a coward's form of suicide. Supposedly, smoking less than two cigarettes a day doesn't have an appreciable affect on a person's health, but smoking still seems to be an effort to shorten our time.

Stunt men are suicidal, too, adrenaline junkies, beer drinkers, bull fighters, pot smokers, drug addicts. We're all looking for an ease, a way out doing the things we enjoy.

Maybe I shouldn't be so focused on a dying man in my state. But, hey, writing has been the thing that has made me feel most alive, has helped me cope best with my troubles.

4. My dentist knows I smoke. He's not concerned about my health as much as he is about his workload, I don't think, having to chip and scrape away at the tar building up on my teeth. He doesn't know that I'm more concerned about having a panic attack in his chair, which feels like a much more immediate risk to my life than a cigarette or two.