The very end of Ran, where the blind boy is playing the flute while standing on a precipice is my favorite bit of movie ever.

Saw Kurosawa's The Lower Depths a couple nights ago. It's maybe nothing original but it's the most blunt, fundamental presentation I can recall. So starkly laid out. The Predicament. How to cope with this life. Sad to know after all those good films he tried to kill himself, slashing his wrists more than 30 times just because he couldn't get funding for movies after already making so many masterpieces. The miracle was that he ever got to make movies in the first place that were so cerebral and dark. Wonder if WWII had something to do with it...

Also watched Gilliam's 12 Monkeys again. Rewatching a lot of old movies on netflix that are free and instantly available online. Sort of a memory test. Who was I back then? Howard the Duck was interesting in trying to remember who I once was. Awful, absurd movie that I still liked. And I remembered why as I watched it.

Gilliam's 12 Monkeys is a lot more like Brazil than I remembered. The time travel thing, watching his own death, is just too gimmicky though.

I've tendency to misremember my intelligence when younger in the sense of thinking myself dumber back then then I actually was. My main 'lack' back then was actually just having too much hope in me. Being too optimistic. Thinking there might be a way forward. A point in trying.

..on a subconscious level I was wishing for death the other night. Was thinking about how people slowly kill themselves, not just with alcohol or illegal drugs, but even with junk food. Or for that matter by destroying relationships, perhaps. All not necessarily with even realizing just what they're doing. In a sense in the face of the typical obese flat affected hospital patient I'm seeing a nihilist who's been slowly killing themselves for years.

(Not that it's entirely all that bad. There's two levels. There is the one where indeed it's that bad. Where, indeed, there is no hope at all. That humans are awful, disgusting creatures. Where the number that break through, the true revolutionaries, the ons who manage to show compassion, concern, friendliness to people outside their family or prospective family are so rare and so setting themselves up for pain that one anymore wishes them to just not even be that way....etc.

But then there's the mere survival, moment to moment life. Where there's some security, some jokes, decent health. And hardly any hurry anyway. It's all a short blink anyway.)

I've been looking forward to death for at least a few years now. The feeling though has definitely increased, recalling back to a poem someone read a few years ago. Since then still more negative information has been uncovered.

It all worries me. I'm afraid I'll have a moment one of these days, where I suddenly feel too 'artistic' and I slash my wrists 30 times. Try to remind myself there's hardly any hurry. And my health's good. I can go jogging for a bit yet before my joints give out. My wife is very very nice. My parents are too. And I have some slight association with a couple beautiful people, to the slight extent they're not locked into barbaric social norms. Anyway there's no hurry and nowhere to go anyway.

Try to withhold honesty on the topic of suicide because I know of quite a few on the political left who have been 'suicided'. Steve Kangas comes to mind. Getting Jack Daniels forced down his throat in a bathroom while he bled to death from the hole in his head. Or perhaps Gary Webb. I surely don't matter at all though and have nothing to worry about there.

No. It's just interesting that my subconscious is thinking about such things. While my conscious has almost completely ignored such questions. Or I should say my conscious has only thought of such things theoretically and generally, but not personally. At least in the last 18 years. Consciously I don't go around thinking about killing myself. If it were to happen it would very sudden. Which is what worries me.... Sometimes I'm driving and it just pops into my head how wonderful it would be if I just suddenly jerk the steering wheel...

What to do?

Remember there's no hurry I guess. And not bother stressing too much during chop chop times.