Having read one note on jumping in “Jumpers,” both cosmically and sympathetically, I will read a second note in “Jumpers” differently.
What does this mean?
It means I will not read the second note in the same way I read the first. One reading will be different from the other. The two readings will differ.
It also means that not all suicides are to be read in the same way in that not all suicides are alike and the same. They too can differ and not just in the particulars. Suicides differ in their heart of hearts.
Some will disagree. Some will extract from suicide a totality in which all suicides truly are one in the same, ultimately and exactly. Augustine was among the first and most influential to do this. Suicide is self-murder, Augustine declared, according to the commandment non occides: thou shall not murder. For what is suicide, reasons Augustine, if not the murdering of oneself?
From the beginning, however, this approach faced problems since it was obvious that not all suicides were in fact the very same. After condemning suicide, Augustine then explains that Samson’s suicide — so as to kill everyone around him — was committed according to “secret instructions” from the Holy Spirit. Now murder-suicide by Samson is neither suicide nor murder. In fact, is Samson’s suicide not the greatest assist ever?
It is.
Augustine also cites the example of nuns who suicided to preserve their chastity as soldiers approached to violate them. He concludes that the nuns acted on “divine authority” such that to prevent their suicides would be its own kind of violation.
Setting aside the minor problem of trying to totalize suicide, others would attempt to accomplish the very same feat throughout the centuries. Many would adopt and adapt Augustine’s formulation. Recall, for instance, Dante who decided that each and every suicide goes to the same exact circle of Hell as punishment for the sin. This is the called the poetical totalizing of suicide.
Perhaps most consequentially, Aquinas built on Augustine and Luther and Calvin borrowed from both, proving that no matter our differences maybe we can all agree that suicide is self-murder deserving of eternal punishment.
Even in the shift from religious to secular readings of suicide, suicide often remained an act more or less beyond the pale. Suicide is murder introjected, for instance, as non-theological psychodynamic totalizing.
Eventually, the totalizing of suicide would take on a more humane tenor that also points back to a separate, time-honored reading of suicide. From ancient times suicide was madness and thus pitiful while still contemptible though now somewhat understandable.
In medieval times, a determination of madness became the gray area between vile sanity that suicides and suiciding by divine instructions. It still was not great to be declared mad or insane. But being mad was better than the alternative, which was to be branded a criminal-sinner deserving of death and damnation.
Over time the judgement of madness softened according to mental health and the aim of prevention. In present days, suicide is an act of “psychache” or “hopelessness” or “despair.” Suicidalness is illness that needs to be cured before the fact. Or, suicide is a lethal disease that is diagnosed afterward.
Although the humane language about suicide is still often totalizing, maybe this is an intentional overreach. Perhaps it is meant to be more functional and operational, as if to say, “In my role as a therapist or examiner I approach reading suicide in this way. This is the lens that I see suicide through.”
These same readers do not pretend to roam the battlefield where a soldier falls on a grenade out of honor and self-sacrifice. Totalizing definitions of prevention also fail to encompass suicide in the face of terminal illness, which mocks the basic premise that crisis is temporary and curable in a better tomorrow. In these cases we arrive at another ancient formulation of suicide by way of fitness in spirit and mind such that suicide is rational and noble and self-authorizing.
This is merely to say that we have just secretly demonstrated in miniature that not all suicides are the same according to suicide itself, whatever that means, since first of all there is a menu of totalized suicides to choose from and they can’t all be right and good. Second, we have shown that suicides takes separate paths and if there are these few ways to chart suicide maybe there are others, as well.
Reading love itself is another good way to read suicide since there is no such thing. There is parental love and filial love and a child’s love and unconditional love and marital love and erotic love and Platonic love and puppy love and unrequited love and stalking love and abusive love and love by the abused and friendship that loves and love that’s more hate and hate with a touch of love and the love for a pet and a dog’s love for you and a cat’s disdain that passes for love and to say that these are all ultimately one in the same coming from a single solitary place is to say I don’t know what.
Maybe the problem is trying to make one word do so much work. Or the problem is working in reverse. Instead of assigning one word to one particular thing, all things with feathers are poked into a particular word. The logic goes something like this:
All birds have feathers.
If a thing has feathers it is a bird.
Therefore, all birds are alike in being feathered as birds.
There are fallacies in there somewhere and having hopelessly mixed the literal with metaphor it is still not inconceivable that what is called suicide should entail different domains in precisely the same we think of the many kinds of love and know the difference without thinking about it such that what is needed is taxonomy rather than totalizing.
Better yet, we need suicide as primary colors in however many there are. What suicide is becomes a color wheel that mixes while adding shade or tint or tone along the way. Suicide now becomes a portrait that is painted and this is how it is best appreciated.
Or maybe what suicide is requires notes that form scales and scales that build to octaves with chords in keys both major and minor such that each suicide becomes its own piece of music, with obvious borrowing from other tunes along the way. Maybe suicide is even the instrumentation and orchestration of a single song that is played to bring it to life.
What love is has all of these as a matter of fact. Unfortunately, nothing even remotely close exists for suicide.
This is simply to say that I will read the second note differently than the first in that the first suicide is different from the second. A different painting. A different song. A different performance.
Some will point out that this is not true since they both obviously ended by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. This is what the article “Jumpers” is all about after all. And they both wrote notes, it is quickly added.
I cannot dispute these points. But if we step back from the jumps, maybe we can gain perspective on the leaps, similar yet vitally different.
* * *
First Reading
What then does the second note say? The second note reads as follows:
Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache.
Tad Friend provides no further information about this jumper except to report that the note was found on the body wrapped in plastic to preserve it. This is all we learn in “Jumpers.”
What shall we even call this person? To call this person “person” seems impersonal. Should we adopt “they” in the absence of identifying markers? How about “it” referring to the body without much else mattering now?
Nothing seems fitting because we have nothing to go by, except we do have a clue. We have the note and so we read the note according to the author. In having the note and the author we then have the actor, not as play pretend but as enaction. This we know from the note written by the author and performed by the actor where authorship is an act and acting finishes the story beyond the margins. So this is who we will refer to.
With author and actor in mind what does the note say, in part?
… I have a toothache.
What then is a toothache?
A toothache is an affliction that resides deep down. The ache is not on the surface to be gotten at easily. It is inaccessible in its deep presence and by depth a toothache makes its presence known. A toothache throbs. It nags. It gnaws. It radiates out. Left untouched a toothache will not go away or get better over time. A toothache is permanent and it only worsens.
Of course a toothache is also eminently fixable in the most everyday sense. Long ago the whole tooth was extracted by clutching onto the surface with vice grips and pulling hard. Now there are less radical measures that drill deep down such that the crisis is over in about an hour. This is made possible by the dental sciences and if the author came from the Bay Area or anywhere else then dentists abound.
Now that we know what a toothache is we can read the first part of the note.
Absolutely no reason …
What is a reason?
A reason is a basis. A grounds. A judgement. A determination. Reasoning arrives at any and all of these so as to act upon them. So to act without a reason is to act randomly or impulsively or impetuously. In the tradition of being mad or insane this helps to explain the act but not to justify what is done.
Now that we know a toothache and a reason we can read the note against the suicide.
In the first instance, the suicide is random and impulsive as the very opposite of suicide according to sound judgement. There is no ground or basis.
… except …
In the second instance, there is a reason and that reason is the toothache, which we know to be a temporary problem that does not require the permanent solution of suicide.
With this reading we arrive at a double, and even triple, condemnation of the suicide as having no reason except for having a terrible reason, both of which call the basic ability of the author and actor to reason into serious question.
If the suicide was a painting it would be all smears. If music then it’s banging on the piano. “Unneeded,” the medical examiner would say and this is how most readers would also assess the author and the act. In fact the note has shock value, deliberately so it seems, that adds to the disturbing and incomprehensible quality of the suicide. It is fair to say that this reading could very well be the right one with nothing much to add.
Except maybe there is much to add to and to subtract from this surface reading of the second note. Does the note really simply characterize the breakdown of basic reasoning as a kind of suicide by defect? Is the action truly random and impulsive and impetuous?
The first challenge is to get past the obvious reading of the note that reads the action, which seems decisive. Friend’s own use of the note points to senselessness in both word and deed as an extreme case of all suicides off the bridge.
But what happens if we read in reverse? What if we read the action into the note?
A random or impetuous suicide suicides wherever you are, with whatever you can get your hands on, in the most expedient way possible. There is no delay. No reflection. No dillydallying.
If we turn to the action of our suicide we first see the composing and writing of the note. Once completed the note is placed in a plastic bag. The bag is sealed tight with enough care and forethought to keep the salty water out. The actor secures the plastic bag in a pocket so the note is not swept away. The actor travels to the Golden Gate Bridge. The actor jumps.
What does the action tell us?
We know from Friend that the Golden Gate Bridge is not a random place to suicide. The bridge is, in fact, the place to suicide especially if you are blessed to live in the Bay Area. The bridge is selected. It becomes the destination. It has to be traveled to with purpose and intention. This is called the pilgrimage portion of the journey, whether by car or bus or on foot.
Once there the actor jumps. To jump off the bridge is to understand the particular setting and the rules of the game. A truly random suicide at the bridge is to get there only to jump into traffic. Friend cites no examples of suicides at the bridge that did not jump off it such that jumpers only refers to one kind of jumping.
Then there is the note, not as the words themselves but as part of the action. To seal and secure the plastic bag so as to distribute the note safely into the bay is to want the note to be picked up and read. In Mr. Friend’s world this is called publishing. It is a note that seeks a readership.
This sequence of steps, or perhaps a variation on them, entails design. There were reasons for each step and taken together they constitute choreography as aim and the effect it wishes to have. This action is called enaction. And, of course, it worked. The suicide was a suicide and the note was read.
At first the readership probably amounted to the medical examiner who can be your harshest critic. Still it was read. Then, perhaps beyond the author’s wildest dreams, the note was dug up and reprinted and distributed widely to be read everywhere a lifetime later.
This is all to say that we now know that the author and actor could in fact reason clearly and deliberately in the suiciding as design and effect, regardless of how the note is read or how many readers the author truly got.
Does this not invite a second reading of the second note with an eye to reason in the suicide itself?
Some will point out that good reasoning in the suiciding does not prove any reason behind it, which can still be defective.
Let’s find out!
* * *
Second Reading
To read the note a second time reads the following:
Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache.
We know what a toothache is. What does a toothache mean?
A toothache means everything. A toothache means you cannot eat. You can’t get a good night’s sleep. You walk through the day in a daze. You work with little enthusiasm with only the toothache on your mind. Plans unravel. Play is no longer fun. A toothache disrupts the very choreography of a normal day. Minutes bleed into hours and even days that are not lived. They are bided and endured until that tooth can get fixed.
To fix a toothache simply means restoring what a toothache took away so you can resume everyday life that nearly ground to a halt. Now the reason to fix a toothache highlights the reason for human life as more human living that is livable that even sometimes comes out a little better in the end.
This is the basic reason for human life that enlists reasoning to work out the details including getting that tooth fixed so eating and sleeping and working and playing can resume. Some call it basic survival in order to thrive. Others call it the command of nature as self-preservation and self-interest and even self-love. It is the not without which of human life.
Of course merely persisting is seldom enough. Is that all there is? Surely there’s more. So it comes to pass that individuals and societies and even the whole species devise grand reasons for human life. These are reasons writ large, better than the natural, that live for the best human life possible even beyond death.
A reason writ large can be intimate and personal. It can be widespread so you sweep yourself up along with everybody else. Often it’s both. You can have just one grand reason or lots of them as most people do. Simply plug reasons into the basic reason for living and watch them decide what self-preservation and self-interest truly mean. Bundle reasons together to burn brightly to show the way. Stack them up and build a tower of reasons for human life.
Reasons are grounds that are solid that open up a world of aims and attitudes and orientations. It is fun to discover new roles and responsibilities by way of reasons writ large. To find value in grand reasons is to become valuable. Identify with reasons and you forge an identity for you from them. Human life has true direction and you have real meaning beyond mere survival, which is good enough for animals but not for this human being.
Now fixing a toothache means you can resume your grand reasons for human life that enlist reasoning to work out the details because you know what life truly means so you go and get that tooth fixed.
The point is not to depict human life in all its complexity and variation. The point is that once built up we can witness how easily a human life breaks down and how reasoning can do nothing about it.
Reasons writ large falter and fail. Reasons do not live up to their promise. Reasons thrive while having no place for you anymore so you are left behind while reasons march on. You even discover you were never truly the reason for them.
As reasons go so goes a human life as goals and orientation, direction and meaning, identity and value, all built up according to reasons that are broken and scattered within and all around. Grand reasons you relied on that even asked you to forgo and sacrifice no longer even provide work or shelter or food for basic survival. The same reasoning that told you to get that tooth fixed to restore and resume life is powerless to gather up the pieces of reasons to put them back together.
Yet the command of self-preservation persists. So you keep living life. Sometimes this is called quiet desperation or it is the furnace that stokes anger and resentment. You become resigned or you rage about it.
The toothache becomes the emblem of the problem in that you do not actually fix a toothache no matter how much reasoning you have. You make an appointment so a dentist can do it. Even dentists don’t fix their own toothaches. They too make appointments.
This, of course, is why people in pain deep down grasp at new reasons and promises and prophets and heroes and saviors. They need someone … anyone … to call to make an appointment to get fixed what is broken no matter the cost.
In fact, reasons for human life are seldom adopted by careful reasoning on what to sign up for and why. Reasons happen by the accident of where you are born and what you are born into. Reasons are fueled by love or hate or fear rather than reason.
Ambition and revenge beget reasons. Reasons seduce. Reasons covet. Reasons come from hunger. Reasons want deserts. Reasons are so you can belong and not be left out. Reasons are stumbled upon. Reasons are fallen into. Reasons are for absolutely no reason at all.
Reasoning that is good and sound and careful and deliberate is often the antidote and immunization against grand reasons for human life. Reasoning feels shifting sands rather than solid ground. Reasoning eschews the promise and pageantry of grand reasons. Reasoning pries open reasons writ large to find defects inside.
While others fall prey to reasons and more reasons and reasons piled on reasons to replace faulty reasons with new and better reasons so as to resume a life with reasons, reasoning leaps where leaping means absolute reasoning that arrives at no reason for good reason.
Now absolute reasoning as absolutely no reason means being human having no aim and no orientation, no hunger or desire, no meaning or value, no hope for more and better life built on reasons and thus no fear of no tomorrow.
Reasoning says, No thank you.
I prefer not to, reasoning explains.
Then reasoning proceeds to work out the details.
* * *
Third Reading
The first reading read the note to read the suicide as impulsive and defective, only to read the suicide to read the note to discover careful reasoning in plain sight. The second reading read the note to read meaning into the suicide to discover absolute reasoning as the absolute absence of reasons. The clue to reading the note a third time comes from composition.
The eight words of the note in two counter-balanced phrases linked by a correlative conjunction — in one word instead of two — total 14 syllables and 7 feet of trochaic meter that bounds and tumbles only to fall freely in the end.
Ab’-so-lute’-ly no’ rea-son’ ex-cept’ I have’ a tooth’-ache.
The note is a line of poetry, or rather the poem consists of one line. It is a death poem. A poem of suicide. And given the poesy of the note we are practically compelled to read the note poetically.
In fact, we have already secretly been doing so.
Recall when you first learned how to read a poem to gather up meaning. Words conceal what words reveal, warned the teacher. A poem requires multiple readings, the teacher adds to the dismay of students. Each reading requires a new orientation. Each orientation leads you along a new path. Now watch as the poem dissolves only to materialize before your very eyes. At least some students were prepared to be amazed.
In the case of the purloined plums, for instance, you first read a simple apology, except that now you detect devilish delight, until finally you find out it was absolutely worth it, and here I write to tell you all about it, which tells you even more about me.
Having read the second note twice the third reading reads the poem to listen and to look. What do you hear in the reading and what do you see?
Recall the first note on the walk and a smile.
I’m going to walk to the bridge.
If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.
To listen carefully is to hear determination amid sadness. Disappointment tempered by openness for a new reason. Unwavering commitment that still secretly looks for the burning bush or a bright light to usher you back from the brink. You see the man walking onward and toward while still waiting for a smile until the very last step before the railing. The note is poignant. The act is heartbreaking and noble where it is the stake that grounds.
You picture long ago a small boy under the covers calling out to see who’s really there. Afraid in the darkness but finding courage in the demand to know. Are you caring or cruel or indifferent? Are you even listening? Even as he calls out the boy whispers an oath to himself so when a small boy who becomes a man hears the silence of the cosmos and knows the final answer he acts accordingly. This is called the courage not to be.
The note on the toothache is different. The note is not poignant. The note laughs. The note is arch. The note knows you will read for the obvious and stop there. You are shocked. Then baffled. Then quick to judge. The note laughs at you. Suit yourself, says the note. The note will keep it to itself.
Unless of course the note is read again with a new orientation. You’re getting warmer, informs the note. The note gets wry again when you go cold, stuck in the mud of absolute reasoning as absolutely no reason.
“Don’t you still have the default of self-preservation?,” the reader wonders. “The basic reason for living surely remains even as reasons crumble.”
The note knows something you do not. It looms but you cannot fathom it. Stop here, admonishes the note. You are not ready for another reading.
“Not ready for what?,” the reader insists.
For what I have become, replies the note, now bursting with glee.
“What is that?,” asks the reader.
I am the world within and all around, chuckles the note.
“What does that mean?”
It means that reasons for more and better human life reside within the world indifferent to your purpose and meaning and value and identity. You know this by the command of self-preservation. Why self-preservation if not because from the very beginning the world sets out to kill you regardless of who you think you are and why you think you should get to live? And in the end it absolutely will. It absolutely does. Even the good and the strong are caught up as the world sets upon you and then moves on. Watch a nature program and you will get the gist.
“But human civilization has risen above savage nature,” the reader assures.
Of course it has, says the note. There are no senseless cruel sudden meaningless deaths outside of nature. Civilization took care of that.
“Besides,” the reader declares, “you cannot pretend to embody a cruel indifferent world that kills. You are a human being after all.”
People enact and thus embody cruelty and indifference all the time. Mostly it’s just directed at others for reasons or for no reason at all where this distinction has no real difference. This is not a defect of the world. It is by design as evidenced by my meter. Senseless death is built into the world no matter how mightily civilization struggles against it since humans are also all for it when it suits and makes total sense. Discriminating death that is ultimately indiscriminate. Them but not you. You but not them. All depending on who it is that discriminates.
I simply become the world within and all around, in miniature of course, but also in essence. I simply call on me as discriminating indiscriminance and the world extinguishes itself for absolutely no reason. Oh, the irony! And it’s funny.
Why?
Because of the correlative conjunction. Because of absolutely no reason at all, except that I actually also do have a toothache. Both are true. How fun is that?
* * *
Final Reading
With three readings of the note we can now read them all at once all together. We could even write the note three times over in the manner of a poem’s poem so repetition wells up inside. Or maybe the note is arranged in haiku, a few syllables short, to give that exotic feel.
Absolutely
no reason except I
have a toothache.
“That’s not reading the note,” some will object. “That’s a rewrite to suit a particular reading.”
They have a point. So maybe we just write the poem of one line and then read it thrice where words conceal what they reveal and what dissolves in the readings materializes in new meaning. This is just to say:
Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache.
.
.
.