After reading my previous post my wife accused me of being morose and moribund. "Why don't you write something happy", she suggested. Hmmm. This from a woman who will still have a job not dissolved by the war come October 1. (My boss's words) A war I didn't endorse at its inception and am even sicker about now. But I digress.
I don't know how I fared toward the supposition of writing a happy blog....
Eons ago I entered college. Toward the end of the first quarter, entering finals week, I became curious about nets that were being erected up around the roofline of the ten story engineering building - the tallest building on campus. My first assumption was that some sort of construction was planned for the roof of the engineering building and these were some kind of OSHA mandate. I was wrong.
I would see these same nets erected every finals week henceforth. The nets' purpose was to "catch" students who, in a suicide attempt, would jump off of the building. Apparently there was some history of this.
[Note: I never really ascertained just what was so difficult about securing roof access to this building and I suppose I won't ever know the answer to this. Go figure.]
Now I've gotten a "B" or two in my time during high school but thought of suicide never entered my mind.
"Yeah it's the Japanese pre-med students.", someone explained to me. "They get a "C" in organic chemistry and it's hare kari time." (Which in this case meant a flying leap off of the engineering building.) Where is The Raven when you need him to explain this culture?
Of course I'm writing this some twenty-five years later but I remember thinking even then at the fallacy of the utter despair that drives one so young to think that their life is in that extreme and utter despair.
I was a scientist to be sure but this, as I thought at the time, depraved ontological phenomenon intrigued me on a sociological and very humanL level - something far outside of my of my normal experience and so I extemporaneously volunteered for the University of California Irvine's Suicide Hotline".
My roommate thought I had lost my mind. After the somewhat exiguous exordium presented by the controlling counselors and psychologists given to we newbies in the suicide world, so did I.
I want to publish this now because I have yard work to attend to but the subject is definitely not closed. Coming up will be the story of Morton - my first case on the suicide hotline.
Anyway, I received a very polite letter from one Ben Kerschberg requesting publicity for his book - Piercing The Veil . The name has been flying around the slogasphere quite a bit of late but I have yet to discover anything about him that raises the bullshit flag. Since I have a little bit of experience in the field (more to come) I thought I'd do him the favor of passing on his specifics. See Ben at his website here or his blog here. If it helps even one person somewhere it was worth it.
3:22:11 PM 
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Welcome To The Club
