Suicide is release from the human condition.
In Death and Western Thought, Jacques Choron notes that Aeschylus praises death as a cure for life’s misery.” In the tragedy Hyppolytus, Euripides writes: “The life of man is all misery and trouble and there is nowhere salvation and peace. Surely there is a better, a blissful existence, but it is hidden in the mists and darkness.” He continues: “So we cling desperately to the deceptive splendors of this world only because we know nothing of another life.”[1] Hamlet might echo this sentiment.
Plato reports in the Apology that when sentenced to death, Socrates proceeds to instruct Athens:
Let us reflect in this way … that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and a relocating for the soul from here to another place. If it is complete lack of perception, like a dreamless sleep, then death would be a great advantage … for all eternity would then seem to be no more than a single night. If, on the other hand, death is a change from here to another place, and what we are told is true and all who have died are there, what greater blessing could there be, gentlemen of the jury?[2]
For Socrates believes he would be in the company of Hesiod and Homer and Ajax and Odysseus and Sisyphus. In the Phaedo, Socrates elaborates on the blessing of death as eternal life. For the “soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor pleasure …”[3] Death is merely the soul unencumbered and released from the body and the world.
Diogenes of Sinope views suicide as a liberation from divine or civic control, as rebellion against both nature and super-nature. [4] For Seneca, suicide is freedom over Nature’s decree. “Just as I choose a ship to sail in or a house to live in, so I choose a death for my passage from life.” “A man’s life should satisfy other people as well, his death only himself, and whatever sort he likes is best.”
So, if the soul “craves the sword or the noose or some potion that constricts the veins, on with it, let it break the chain of slavery.”[5]
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[1] Choron, Death and Western Thought.
[2] Apology 40c–41a
[3] Phaedo 65c
[4] Droge and Tabor, 26.
[5] Seneca, Essays and Letters, 204.
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The next morning all could be found seated on the cushioned bench for the official viewing of the painting. It was a tight fit especially avec bear but they made it work and it wasn’t even awkward.
The headlamp had long gone out but more importantly the head was missing. They had searched every corner of the room and no one could find it. There was a shared confidence that an unattached head doesn’t simply get up and walk away. But where did it go? Foxy sure didn’t know, and nobody else did either.
After this unexpected delay the moral examiners and Foxy were ready for the art appreciation portion of the suicide autopsy. Everyone wore what looked like old-timey cardboard glasses that you would find in a movie theater. But these glasses are far from ordinary and are not available to the general public. These glasses are the latest in reconstructive 6-D technology, explains Randolph.
The first advancement is that you don’t need a moving picture for proper viewing. 4-D technology brings to life a particular picture painting in full depth and over time so that we see the unfolding story of the painting-as-static-object that is now become living and breathing.
Then 5-D stands back from the story and tells the story of the story, which in the story of the meaning of the painting by way of the painter as the tale of a suicide. For instance, in a collection of exotic tales called Palace of Pleasure (1566), William Painter retells the suicide of Pantheia, wife of Abradatas, first reported in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.
Painter writes that upon learning of the death of Abradatas who fell in battle alongside Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, quote, Panthea with a sworde, whiche she had prepared long time for that purpose, killed her selfe, and laying her head vpon her husbandes breaste, she yelded from her chaste bodie, her innocent ghost, unquote.
6-D is then the story of the story of the story, which is nothing less than the story of the soul. Or lack thereof, added Randolph. Or lack thereof, nodded Randolph. We see that more often than you might think. A soulless suicide, which, ironically may not be a suicide at all if you see my meaning. And everyone nodded.
What happens if I am wearing the 6-D glasses and I look at you? asked Foxy. Will I see your souls?
Don’t do that!, they all cried with hands raised to deflect a bullet to the face. Just don’t do that.
Okay okay, said Foxy, as he stole a quick glance and he saw everything and swore never to do that again.
Will the glasses work on any painting?, he asked to change the subject. I am planning a trip next summer and visiting the finest museums in the land with these glasses on would be glorious.
Sadly, not exactly. You see a few days ago as Randolph and Randolph were skinning the body they slashed on inward through the abdomen to reach the stomach. I had a hunch, said the lead examiner. And what did they find? A stomach filled with blood.
And not just any blood. It was the blood of the body. The body’s blood. And not from a wound. No, not from bleeding inside.
What then? asked Foxy.
From self-feeding. This body nourished itself with its own blood even as it starved. I’ve heard that an Indian warrior while crossing the barren plain will make a careful incision and drink small amounts of the blood of his horse just to survive while not killing his trusty steed. Well, this was not that. This was a full feasting where the man and horse are one in the same and they just go nuts on the blood. And this is to our good fortune. For you see, we use the blood as a universal binder mixed with the finest pigments to make paints to paint over the paint to paint a painting. We all it painting painting. Let us all turn to the painting now truly painted.
The painting was small, maybe 10 inches tall and 12 inches wide. It was bordered by a cheap wooden frame with faux wood grain probably purchased at a local drug store or five and dime.
Next to the painting the placard reads, Look Out Your Window It’s Dawn. On the horizon is a big yellow sun with rays beaming outward in orange. The sky is the same orange only paler and more washed out. The sun is halfway up and on this side of the horizon is an ocean of dark blue with pale blue waves cresting gently. Dark blue squiggles that do not look at all like real seagulls cruise across the water and through the morning air backlit by a rising sun. The shore with gentle hills rising stands between water and sky in burnt orange, browned and running along the full length of the small canvas. And that is literally it. A lot of orange and blue with yellow in the middle in a very small painting.
So you see to uncover the true painting this painting is painted over with the body’s blood drunk by the body of the suicide in paints to match perfectly the paint to really bring out the paintings real paintedness. There are only three colors in the painting that we had to have to have painted over. This makes it easy. We needed a cold pigment from the high mountains to make the blood turn blue. To get yellow we add filamentry strips of skin from the very corpse of our man over there. And the orange comes from blood mixed with Mandarin orange peels. Satsumas will also work if you have them on hand, around Christmas time for instance or really for any special occasion. Which reminds me, said the lead examiner, and he wrote something on the autopsy report in careful cursive letters.
What if the painting is more colorful? asked Foxy. Are there limits to the number of colors you can get out of blood?
That is a good question, said Randolph. The answer is, Yes and no. Yes, added Randolph, because there are limits. And, no, because there really are no limits. Though, yes, limits. But, no, no limits really. And yes, limits. Though no limits, not at all. So, no and yes. We call this the dangerous maybe of color palettes.
I see, said Foxy. That’s helpful. Once you have the paint how do you get the painting?
With that Randolph and Randolph and the lead examiner paused to harmonize and began a slow chant in primordial tones.
Blood blood
What have you done?
What has been done to you?
Speak in shapes and shades
that we might know the true story.
This actually rhymes and flows better in the original mid-evil Italian, parole e sangue, but then it also sounds like you’re ordering à la carte off the pasta menu at the Olive Garden. But that is what we say to the blood paint and then we pour the paint mixtures onto the canvas, which we lay flat over on the wooden table. Color after color is poured onto the canvas and the blood rushes to and fro. There is no method to the pouring and no effort to do the painting ourselves. We pour in the same way you would empty a goblet of wine into sacred earth, or dirty water down the kitchen sink. We just dump it and the paint will find its proper place. It always does.. The artistry of painting is the work of the blood and the blood alone. It is the blood that is both paint and painter.
Soon coagulation sets the colors this way and that and a picture emerges exactly as the original though lesser version. It may be a lonely bus terminal and a filthy bathroom with slit wrists and a body slumped over fast losing consciousness. The painting might depict an elderly couple painting themselves laying in bed, holding hands for a final time, with pills or a gun on the nightstand. We see self-portraits, but also paintings of pets, or a starry night, or a rocking chair, or someone’s child smiling brightly with missing front teeth.
We see fond memories but also nightmares, trauma, loss. Sometimes these are crammed into one fragmented picture that says too many things all once. We see paintings from prison cells and fancy suburban mansions and rundown apartments and empty parking lots and battle torn country sides.
Some paintings are bathed in shadow, and others in blinding light. Some are abstract and others are so real they seem more like a photograph. The painting can also take on the look and texture of different paints such as oil or acrylic. Our work today looks more like watercolor, said the lead examiner, gesturing to the painting hanging on the wall.
Our first question of course, now getting down to business, is, Who is Dawn? It’s possible that Dawn is the missing link. A past love. A lost love. A wasted moment. A deep regret. Someone who went away never to return. Dawn was lost at sea. Lost in a shipwreck. Or maybe Dawn finally returned, appearing just outside the window, back from the shipwreck, only to be lost once more by a different and more severe shipwreck. Or maybe ship attacked by giant squid. Came at night. No warning. No survivors. And more sadness and regret.
Randolph and Randolph shook their heads in dismay and stunned disbelief at the tragedy and senselessness of it all. Foxy shed a tear. Poor Dawn.
Maybe we will never know what truly happened to Dawn. Sometimes the sea tells no tales from the depths of memory locked away forever. But we do know that Dawn is not really there, said the lead examiner with authority. Dawn is a figment. Wishful thinking. Hopeless hopefulness.
Look out your window all your want!, he called to the painting, and waited as if for a reply, an acknowledgement, a final recognition.
We also know, the lead examiner continued with obvious disappointment, that this corpse is no artist, now gesturing toward the painting. This sad little painting, this sad little corpse.
Well, said the lead examiner, let’s see what we see.
And with glasses on, everyone stared intently into Look Out Your Window It’s Dawn.