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Staggered home after TaxBwana on Monday so aggrieved over the state of the world that I immediately began researching how to acquire an industrial-sized tank of helium.
Inhaling helium is really the most painless (& therefore practical) way of killing oneself.
Researching painless ways of killing myself is something I do—well: not often. But often enough.
Am I depressed when I do it? I wouldn’t know: I am completely disengaged from my own emotions, a veritable Queen of Dissociation. What I feel on a day-to-day level is mostly ironic detachment, punctuated by bursts of affection for specific individuals and a general admiration for anyone who fights the power. Small acts of gallantry move me to tears.
Fortunately for me, my many idylls with psychedelia early in life created a kind of personality split so that one part of my psyche is always playing Nanny to the other parts of my personality.
And the Nanny part of my personality intoned in a brisk, no-nonsense voice: Stop this foolishness! Distract yourself! Watch a movie!
So I watched Nosferatu.
Nosferatu is an exceedingly strange movie, but it fit the bill because however awful life under a Trump presidency is here in the US of Ay circa 2025, life in the imaginary German city of Wisborg circa 1830, under siege by the nightmarish Count Orlok, is far more terrible, so you know—count your blessings, girlfriend!
At its heart, Nosferatu is a film about the Victorian suppression of female sexual desire. Its heroine Ellen is described as “unusually receptive” (or words to that effect) and such a lonely child that early in life, she psychically summons an incubus—the vampire Count Orlok. (The word “Nosferatu” is a transliteration of the archaic Romanian word “Nesuferitu” meaning “he who is offensive”—& if you squint, you can see the Latin there.)
The director Robert Eggers chooses to impose Victorian attitudes & explanations onto Ellen’s intense sensuality, & that is such an interesting choice because, of course, with a different set of attitudes, the plot becomes Twilight.
The acting, the art direction, the cinematography are all superb—darkness is almost another character in the film. And the ending—Ellen literally consumed by love and the vampire dying in her arms as for the first time, sunlight breaks through the dark Gothic gloom of the German city, is a fascinating take on a particular type of obsessive sexual love that, yes, I have experienced personally, and yes, is utterly transformative & ego-annihilating.
###
Then yesterday, I staved off the blues by working out more intensely than usual, so I was awash with sunshiney endorphins all the live-long day!
It would be great if I could work out every day, but I can’t because I’m old & I need those refractory periods, and anyway, I have stuff to do—like in 15 minutes, I must scuttle off for more TaxBwana-ing.
Inhaling helium is really the most painless (& therefore practical) way of killing oneself.
Researching painless ways of killing myself is something I do—well: not often. But often enough.
Am I depressed when I do it? I wouldn’t know: I am completely disengaged from my own emotions, a veritable Queen of Dissociation. What I feel on a day-to-day level is mostly ironic detachment, punctuated by bursts of affection for specific individuals and a general admiration for anyone who fights the power. Small acts of gallantry move me to tears.
Fortunately for me, my many idylls with psychedelia early in life created a kind of personality split so that one part of my psyche is always playing Nanny to the other parts of my personality.
And the Nanny part of my personality intoned in a brisk, no-nonsense voice: Stop this foolishness! Distract yourself! Watch a movie!
So I watched Nosferatu.
Nosferatu is an exceedingly strange movie, but it fit the bill because however awful life under a Trump presidency is here in the US of Ay circa 2025, life in the imaginary German city of Wisborg circa 1830, under siege by the nightmarish Count Orlok, is far more terrible, so you know—count your blessings, girlfriend!
At its heart, Nosferatu is a film about the Victorian suppression of female sexual desire. Its heroine Ellen is described as “unusually receptive” (or words to that effect) and such a lonely child that early in life, she psychically summons an incubus—the vampire Count Orlok. (The word “Nosferatu” is a transliteration of the archaic Romanian word “Nesuferitu” meaning “he who is offensive”—& if you squint, you can see the Latin there.)
The director Robert Eggers chooses to impose Victorian attitudes & explanations onto Ellen’s intense sensuality, & that is such an interesting choice because, of course, with a different set of attitudes, the plot becomes Twilight.
The acting, the art direction, the cinematography are all superb—darkness is almost another character in the film. And the ending—Ellen literally consumed by love and the vampire dying in her arms as for the first time, sunlight breaks through the dark Gothic gloom of the German city, is a fascinating take on a particular type of obsessive sexual love that, yes, I have experienced personally, and yes, is utterly transformative & ego-annihilating.
###
Then yesterday, I staved off the blues by working out more intensely than usual, so I was awash with sunshiney endorphins all the live-long day!
It would be great if I could work out every day, but I can’t because I’m old & I need those refractory periods, and anyway, I have stuff to do—like in 15 minutes, I must scuttle off for more TaxBwana-ing.
