Against the Grain
Or
A Valediction: Forbidding Suicide


I do not want you to go into your end like a crucible: thinking, writing, poeticizing, and philosophizing yourself into oblivion. Sure, anyone of decent intellect can think on the basis of existence! Boil us down into molecules, atoms, subatomic particles…which are nothing more than a shade to the right of meaningless.

But give these thoughts no dominion – not over you – not over me.

Gestalt psychology states that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and I believe this. And it is because I possess this faith that I transitively am more than this mere combination of molecules: a vessel consisting of 88% water – for even water mysteriously flows north rather than south in some old parts of the world. As I, too go against the grain.

How can I have so much hope while you have so little? Do we not share the same knowledge? The same moment on this earth? If we simply are because we think, then that is all the comfort I need in the world. That, and to know you’re still in it.