Sinister: So you'll aim toward the sky

[Will Salt]

Sorry, but this isn't an on-topic post, a detective post, or a light,
uplifting post.  Sinisterians who only read posts with that sort of thing
in should skip to the last paragraph, which has Ken in it.

Instead, you have a rambly, train-of-thought post for your pleasure and
delight.

My little flat is on a council estate in the middle of the city, but
despite that it's overlooked by a line of beautiful sandstone cliffs, a
few hundred yards away.  When I look through my living room window, I can
see a small stretch of cliff in the gap between my neighbours' houses.
Every morning when I get up and let the cat out into the garden for a
while, I look up at the cliffs and see what colour they are, because they
look different with every change in light.

Some days, when I have nothing less important to do, I go for a walk
along the top of the cliffs.  I sit down at the edge and look out over the
city.  I watch the city sleep in the sunlight, and look out for all the
places I know: the flats I've lived in, the buildings I've worked in, the
places I've been.  I look out over the river to see if I can identify all
the towns on the opposite bank, and name all the islands in between.

One morning last week, I got out of bed in the morning to let the cat into
the garden, and I looked up at the cliffs.  I could see people in green
coats walking about purposefully at the top and bottom of them, and a
Royal Parks Police van stood by at the bottom.  I knew, immediately, what
they were doing.  The cliffs that overlook my home are one of the most
popular places in the city, for people -- mostly students -- who have
decided that they want to die.  The policemen in the bright green jackets
were collecting the parts of someone's broken body off the ground and
taking it to the infirmary morgue.

It made me sit and wonder, not "why would anyone want to kill themselves",
but "how could anyone be brave enough to kill themself?"  I'm not a very
brave person, and there are many things that I wish I was brave enough to
do.  However, I'm glad that I'm not a brave person, because I clearly
remember one afternoon, when I was at university, sitting crunched up with
my hands round me knees on a beach in the far north-west of the country.
I was sat at the head of a broad loch filled with islands, and in the
distance I could see the narrows leading out into the Atlantic.  I knew
that beyond those lighthouses, there was no land until Canada.  I didn't
want to be there, I didn't want to do what I was doing, and I knew that
everything would be better if I were to walk into the water, start
swimming to the horizon and just keep on going.

Nobody knows, incidentally, whether the man at the bottom of the cliff
killed himself or not.  His body was found at 8am, he had no ID, and his
head was smashed open too badly to be identified.  The rocks round about
were covered in blood.

Someone said recently that as this list has 1450 people on it, it's bound
to have *someone* who supports any particular viewpoint.  I want to say to
all of you, therefore, who want to destroy yourselves: I hope you can
rejoin the world of the living.  Whether you are refusing to eat, whether
you are gorging yourself on the entire contents of your local patisserie
and vomiting it into the drains, or whether you are just trying to think
of the easiest way to die.  The life you have already isn't wonderful, but
some moments of it can be.  Go to the cliffs from below, and watch their
colour change in the light.  We might never recover from wanting to shut
our bodies down, but we can at least put it to the back of our minds for
as long as we can.

I said earlier: I'm not as brave as I wish I was.  I tried to do things
about this when I was younger, but I'm still not *quite* as brave as I
need to be.  Back in the mists of teenage time when I was still religious,
I tried to get into public speaking by reading the Bible out in church.
Although I was by far the youngest of the lay readers, I was the only one
who you could hear right at the back.  I would stand at the front, at the
lectern in front of all the rapt worshippers, and would boom out: "The
lesson today is from the twenty-second chapter of the book of Deuteronomy,
starting at the fifth verse."  About that time, though, I started to feel
guilty because I suspected it was wrong; then I realised that it's not
something I should feel guilty about and I'm not going to hell whatever my
lessons say.  I guess that makes me braver in one way, even if it wasn't
my intention.

I still kept up the church readings even though I didn't believe in it,
until I left home.  It was good fun.  The old ladies in the congregation
all thought I would become a bishop some day.  Maybe I should go back home
and give them a shock.

Um, I think I had a point when I started writing this.  It was something
like "don't all argue about how what clothes you wear affects *you* as an
individual"  That comes up every few months on the list, after all.  I
think I was trying to say that there are far more important things to
bother about, like being nice to people just to show them that the world
is a nice place.  Don't be blinkered, don't wrap yourself in cliques, that
sort of thing.

Also, don't wear stuff just cos you want to be part of a scene.  Just wear
what you want to, if you're brave enough.  And be as supportive as you can
to all the people who aren't brave enough to walk outside dressed to match
their inner selves.

People always start leaving lists when you get horrible nasty arguments.
I'm thinking of leaving Sinister---or at least, being more of a
lurker---but it's not because of any of that.  It's just because it's time
I stopped posting neverending posts like this one whenever I think I'm
starting to feel "deep".  I might come back again before long, possibly in
disguise, possibly in less of a disguise.

Oh, don't *just* dress the way you want.  Dress in a way that will get you
into Chu's pants, of course!  I'm sure every Sinister girl wants to do
that; well, apart from me maybe.


xx

-- 
http://www.btinternet.com/~wpsalt/






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