How much longer do we have to live? What’s the right age to gracefully bow out? When will we have done our time? Hasn’t been too long, already? Haven’t we taken it too far? Haven’t we missed the perfect age to finish ourselves off? Perhaps that’s our guilt: that we missed the obvious point. That we didn’t take the turn. Didn’t act. Didn’t do it then, when we should have done. We missed out … And survived …
We missed the moment. When was it? When was it time to … When should we have done it? Oh but it’s too late now. It’d be grotesque now. Even more grotesque than just living on, or whatever we’re doing.
We’re living on. We’re allowing ourselves to live on. That old life instinct. So misplaced. So … redundant …
Our just-going-on. Our tastelessness. It really shouldn’t be allowed. And nor should we allowed.
What’s our excuse? For not just … taking our lives. Right here! Right now! Just throwing ourselves in the North Sea. There it is: the whole North Sea. We could just walk out on Tynemouth Peer or Southern Pier and throw ourselves off. No, not even throw ourselves off – too histrionic. Just let ourselves slip into the ocean. Just gently lower ourselves in.
Fixing the anomaly, but gently, quietly. Mending the tear in the universe, without making a fuss. Death! Just death! Why don’t we do it? Why not, right now? Just throw ourselves off the ferry, when no one was looking. Without making a fuss … Just drown ourselves there, where the Tyne is at its broadest.
Correct the error. Negate the negation.
Our coast suicides. Our Tynemouth suicides. Our Whitley Bay suicides. Our Cullercoats suicides. Our South Shields suicides. Our North Shields suicides. Which is it to be? Will we die on Long Sands. In King Edward’s Bay. On Whitley sands? Will we throw ourselves from St Mary’s Lighthouse?
Our posthumousness. Our going on. Our continuation. Our deepening grotesquerie. Our deepening of the grotesquerie of the universe. That we’re still here is an embarrassment, First of all to us. To everyone! For everyone! That we’re still here … That we’re still alive … That we remain … How is that possible? Still going on. still alive. A bad joke! My God!
We missed the chance! And here we are! Here we still are! We missed our divinely appointed moment to die. When we’d reached our highest, our best. When we were at our highest, our best. When we weren’t as we are now: entirely fallen beings. Entire failures. My God. There was a purity to us then. We weren’t nothings, then. We weren’t entirely dead, then.
If we were to shoot ourselves now. If we could get hold of a gun and blast ourselves in the face … It’d be … inappropriate. We would have missed our chance. Missed our appointment.
And now – what’s left to us? The disaster happened. We did not die. Hunter Graccushes of Long Sands. We’re wandering Jews. And now it’s no longer the time to die … not anymore.
We ride the Metro instead. We buy Metro Day Saver passes instead. We go Metro roving instead. We make Metro journeys. Metro trips out to the coast. Metro trips hither and yon.
We ride the Metro network instead. We look at out at the sea from the train carriage, instead. So we look at out at the river Tyne from 100 foot viaducts instead. We count off the Metro stations instead.
Work in Progress 