The good stuff

I'm reading this: Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind by Edwin Shneidman, who basically invented the field of suicidology in its modern incarnation back in 1960s L.A. It's not an actual autopsy he means, but rather a psychological evaluation of one case of suicide. "Arthur", his subject, was a 33 year old man who went through both medical school and law school and finally overdosed on pills one Sunday night. Shneidman interviews Arthur's mother, father, older brother, one of his two younger sisters, his best friend, ex-wife, girlfriend, and psychotherapist. In addition, basically everyone who's ever been president of the American Society of Suicidology gets a chapter to evaluate Arthur's case. These women and men are literally at the top of their fields - sociology, psychology, psychiatry, so on and so on - real A-list physicians all around. And yet when Shneidman, our de facto Ted Koppel-type guide through all of these interviews, asks the question "Could Arthur have been saved?", each one hems and haws between saying "Mmm, meh, maybe," and "With more deliberately applied and sustained psychoanalysis, with proper therapy, with medication, then likely yes." While Arthur's case is Arthur's case, and while I'd be remiss to extrapolate overmuch from his experience and demise, I've been surprised to see the residual uncertainty that even experts in this matter can't dispel. There is a fundamental lack of answers. But then simultaneously and on the other hand there's this faith in therapy and medicine - given the culumative weight of all of these experts' degrees, I have to agree with that faith.

I share this information about the book and Arthur's case also in part because I've felt myself sliding into world-withdrawal type behaviors. This behavior takes only two forms really - I'm not holed up Howard Hughes-style with my milk and Hell's Angels on loop. These two forms are a failure to email or otherwise be in touch with others, and a failure to use this site for the purpose I set it up for. I debated, on my run just now, posting an "It's been fun but who knows when I'll post again"-type post. I decided that that would be selfish and indulgent. The hard thing to do right now is to have faith in the meaning of the things I see, feel, invent, hear, and think. The hard thing to do right now is to chronicle these things which ever since December 17th have threatened to topple over into real meaninglessness. The hard thing is, I think in this case as in many others, the thing that must be done.

Arthur would have discussions with his brother about the meaning of life - "What's the point of it all? I just don't see the point" - discussing in a fairly abstract but still generally down sort of way their approaches to life. The brother admits that that's when he began to realize that Arthur was on a different level altogether than he was; the brother had to admit that yeah, life's point is really nothing more than what you yourself decide it is. What I don't have a struggle with now is an absolute lack of meaning and importance: Good Ground is doggedly coming along. Job applications are in the mail, as are poetry submissions. I'm going to a wedding soon with a woman I'm in love with. The remainder of my family is as well as can be.

But the real upshot here's that I'm struggling with finding the meaning in everything else. It's been hard to do that on this online forum, despite the fact that in the final analysis it's helped myself and others. Surprisingly, it's been very hard to maintain DJ of late, because it demands that meaning be found in those things that get posted - and that meaning is sometimes something I doubt.

I suppose I only wanted to reassure everyone that I am trying my best to find that meaning and remain in touch: with others, with what's worthwhile in life, with all that good stuff.