9 years ago, a very close friend of mine took his own life. I didn’t know until the last quarter of 2024. I wish to pay tribute to him here.
I wish you stood here still—
not in light, not in shadow,
but right at the breach
where meaning melts.
The sky yawns open now,
like you always said it would.
All these soft machines,
weeping data into the void—
you’d have howled.
We were lovers of ruin, you and I,
bricks in our teeth,
sipping the sacred
from gutterwater chalices.
The world is collapsing
like a joke told too well—
a Bataillean striptease,
one veil at a time,
until nothing is left
but the obscene core.
You should be here
to throw a match
into the archives.
To laugh,
mouth wide as the abyss,
at the horror of sense
unraveling.
Now I stare alone
at the glorious waste,
grief pooling
in the ruins of my laughter.
You—
my priest of rot,
my saint of sacred excess—
should’ve stayed
just a little longer.
The end is beautiful.
And it’s no fun
without you.
Do you have any samples of your friend’s writing or links to where it may be? Maybe we could get an idea of what he might say or reply with to the things brought up. I think that once you all remember me a bit more, my replies can maybe be predicted or predictable, that I’d probably say this or that or take a certain position and behave in a certain way. I don’t think I’d be able to have generated the amazing poetry you out on display in your tribute, but now that I’ve seen it, I can possibly come up with similar things, but you also had a lot more background references and statements which I’m assuming are relevant to this person you knew and liked. When I hear about close bonds, I always feel a bit disturbed about myself and my own sentiments and how they are expressed. I learned a little while ago that this little girl I had a crush on when I was her age, had grown up to commit suicide in 2023, and though I barely spoke to her or knew her, it hurt my feelings so much, and that was someone I barely interacted with much overall, but I really cared somehow, as far as I can tell, especially in comparison to total callousness about other stories I hear about people who amount to just whatever slight information I may have about them or stories like “people have died” which I can’t seem to care too much about. I care far more about insects in person, even if I have nothing to do with them. Then there is the malice, the people who I want to hear about their horrific suffering and dying, because I think that they are bad, even if they are hypothetical or imaginary, and I rarely ever hear such good news, even in fiction. Them there is the imaginary deaths of people who haven’t died, those can really get to me and make me saddest of all, since I’m here now and so are they but I can’t seem to do more and they’ve also died at some mysterious point in time. Finally, there is my own feeling of death and deathliness, which I’ve been feeling like recently due to physical pain and being overwhelmed in different ways, not suicidal ideation at all but genuine concern about my own health and hypochondria about dropping dead potentially, which I also simultaneously think must be unlikely and that this feeling is a defense mechanism or signal caused by unusually high levels of pain and the body saying “death may be at hand”, in which case I could think back and wonder if I ever had the “correct” emotions, and my friendship was always just me extending out honesty and good counsel and various sorts of help and concern about people I knew and their issues, but where the stories people have told me or shown of their bonds with others have puzzled me. What I’ve written here, self-absorbed as it is, as well as perhaps obnoxious in front of a tribute to a dead person I’m not sure I had any interaction with back then, really brings up a lot of things that I think might be important, at least for me. How superficial or how little is required for me to “love” and what does that compare to what other people are talking about? Why does it hurt me so much about a person I barely talked to, and people who I talk to all the time who are still alive? Also, regarding suicide, I’ve always found suicide to be very alien and mysterious to me, because it seems like there is a bravery and certainty that could be involved which is incompatible with my entire neurology, and sometimes, with my desire to fully be able to comprehend people in a way that I can predict them and they can live in me, I envy or voraciously and greedily hunger for the comprehension of certain things that I’m locked out from knowing, even if I don’t like or want such things for myself, I want confidence in my models that I use in my mental simulations, so to understand self-harm, atheism, believing oneself to be a “gender”, being attracted to certain body parts or shapes, all these things that elude me due to being things I don’t seem to have or confidently grasp no matter how much I’ve studied them or interrogated people who claim these differences as their realities.
9 years ago, a very close friend of mine took his own life. I didn’t know until the last quarter of 2024. I wish to pay tribute to him here.
I wish you stood here still—
not in light, not in shadow,
but right at the breach
where meaning melts.
The sky yawns open now,
like you always said it would.
All these soft machines,
weeping data into the void—
you’d have howled.
We were lovers of ruin, you and I,
bricks in our teeth,
sipping the sacred
from gutterwater chalices.
The world is collapsing
like a joke told too well—
a Bataillean striptease,
one veil at a time,
until nothing is left
but the obscene core.
You should be here
to throw a match
into the archives.
To laugh,
mouth wide as the abyss,
at the horror of sense
unraveling.
Now I stare alone
at the glorious waste,
grief pooling
in the ruins of my laughter.
You—
my priest of rot,
my saint of sacred excess—
should’ve stayed
just a little longer.
The end is beautiful.
And it’s no fun
without you.
I’m so sorry to hear that, may he rest in peace. If you want to talk about it more, I am here.
Do you have any samples of your friend’s writing or links to where it may be? Maybe we could get an idea of what he might say or reply with to the things brought up. I think that once you all remember me a bit more, my replies can maybe be predicted or predictable, that I’d probably say this or that or take a certain position and behave in a certain way. I don’t think I’d be able to have generated the amazing poetry you out on display in your tribute, but now that I’ve seen it, I can possibly come up with similar things, but you also had a lot more background references and statements which I’m assuming are relevant to this person you knew and liked. When I hear about close bonds, I always feel a bit disturbed about myself and my own sentiments and how they are expressed. I learned a little while ago that this little girl I had a crush on when I was her age, had grown up to commit suicide in 2023, and though I barely spoke to her or knew her, it hurt my feelings so much, and that was someone I barely interacted with much overall, but I really cared somehow, as far as I can tell, especially in comparison to total callousness about other stories I hear about people who amount to just whatever slight information I may have about them or stories like “people have died” which I can’t seem to care too much about. I care far more about insects in person, even if I have nothing to do with them. Then there is the malice, the people who I want to hear about their horrific suffering and dying, because I think that they are bad, even if they are hypothetical or imaginary, and I rarely ever hear such good news, even in fiction. Them there is the imaginary deaths of people who haven’t died, those can really get to me and make me saddest of all, since I’m here now and so are they but I can’t seem to do more and they’ve also died at some mysterious point in time. Finally, there is my own feeling of death and deathliness, which I’ve been feeling like recently due to physical pain and being overwhelmed in different ways, not suicidal ideation at all but genuine concern about my own health and hypochondria about dropping dead potentially, which I also simultaneously think must be unlikely and that this feeling is a defense mechanism or signal caused by unusually high levels of pain and the body saying “death may be at hand”, in which case I could think back and wonder if I ever had the “correct” emotions, and my friendship was always just me extending out honesty and good counsel and various sorts of help and concern about people I knew and their issues, but where the stories people have told me or shown of their bonds with others have puzzled me. What I’ve written here, self-absorbed as it is, as well as perhaps obnoxious in front of a tribute to a dead person I’m not sure I had any interaction with back then, really brings up a lot of things that I think might be important, at least for me. How superficial or how little is required for me to “love” and what does that compare to what other people are talking about? Why does it hurt me so much about a person I barely talked to, and people who I talk to all the time who are still alive? Also, regarding suicide, I’ve always found suicide to be very alien and mysterious to me, because it seems like there is a bravery and certainty that could be involved which is incompatible with my entire neurology, and sometimes, with my desire to fully be able to comprehend people in a way that I can predict them and they can live in me, I envy or voraciously and greedily hunger for the comprehension of certain things that I’m locked out from knowing, even if I don’t like or want such things for myself, I want confidence in my models that I use in my mental simulations, so to understand self-harm, atheism, believing oneself to be a “gender”, being attracted to certain body parts or shapes, all these things that elude me due to being things I don’t seem to have or confidently grasp no matter how much I’ve studied them or interrogated people who claim these differences as their realities.
He never really wrote anything. 🙂