I found out this afternoon that a friend of mine died this last Sunday.

He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

In his case, I can’t really blame him. He was diabetic, losing his eyesight, in poor health, in constant pain, and just got news that his leg was going to have to be amputated above the knee.

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It is many hours and a fair amount of sake and whiskey since I started this post. Since I rarely drink, I feel I should disclaim in advance.

There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide.

~ Albert Camus

Don’t we all have some wound, psychic or physical? At what point is it too much? My friend decided that losing limbs and his senses (sight) was too much.

I couldn’t help but take that news today and fly back in time and think about my dad. Hell, it’s closing in on Father’s Day anyway and I was working on writing something for that day. Might as well start now.

My pop’s death was deemed an “accidental overdose,” but I know, and those of us close to him knew, that it was a suicide. Perhaps an “accidental suicide” but regardless, the man was in pain and had been self-medicating for years as a means to an end.

So, the question is: Why do people kill themselves? Okay, maybe that’s not the question, because that answer is easy: they were in pain. I guess the question is: how much pain is enough? Perhaps that is the question.

In my friend’s position, he was falling apart. Literally. (and yes, I mean that word in the true sense, not in some hipster figurative miscalculation of the word). In my dad’s case… I don’t know. He had a pain in his belly that he’d had since he was in his early 20’s, most likely a result of a botched surgery. He also had considerable “psychic pain”. Would that spiritual or psychic pain have been enough to do the deed if he hadn’t the physical pain as well? Would he have been an alcoholic and drug abuser without the physical pain? I don’t know. I tend to think, yes. But these are questions that will never be answered. Do people who have constant physical pain not have psychic pain as well? I know plenty of people who have psychic or spiritual pain who have no physical maladies. And that pain is plenty on its own.

I will refer now to one of my most-liked websites Post Secret (and if you don’t know the history of this very cool project, check here.) They list the Suicide Prevention Hotline at the bottom of most of their weekly posts.

That said… and please refer to my above disclaimer…  I feel like a Bad Person ™ even asking this, but is suicide sometimes a viable alternative? I mean, why should someone live in pain and have a super poor quality of life? Just for the sake of being able to say that they are alive? Because people who love that person don’t want them to go away? That seems rather ridiculous and selfish to me.

I’m too tired to continue this post, and perhaps I could condense it to a two, or three line Facebook status report and elicit a spirited debate in that medium, but this is my website, so I’ll post here. Feel free to comment, argue, grandstand. I’m not guaranteeing I’ll “approve” all comments (this is not a democracy site, but a totalitarian fun park, after all) but I still would like to hear your thinks.

I hope any of that makes sense because I’m not going to bother editing it.
I’m going to forage in my refrigerator now, because apparently rambling to the interwebz gives me an appetite.

It never ceases to amaze me how a little motorcycle ride can be so therapeutic.

I was supposed to visit with a friend this eve, but when I stopped to fill up my bike’s gas tank, I realized I didn’t want to stop. I sent off a text message, and was on my way.

The moon is almost full. Did you see it? It’s beautiful tonight. I rode into the moon-rise and wish I could have ridden right onto the moon. I think I need a large ramp for that feat. Instead, it seemed like I was chasing the moon into the night. I love that feeling. Serene, with only the moon and thoughts for company.

I rode east with the intention of traveling to a little twisty road for an evening run. I ended up missing my exit off the highway and discovered that when you take the 202 loop to where it bends back west a bit, it smells like farm. Ah, smells of home. Phew! Smells of home. Whoa.

After I realized I missed my exit, I turned around on possibly the loneliest exit ramp I’ve ever been on. There were no street lights, the exit ramp rode down with a dead-end road to the right, a road to nowhere to the left, and the u-turn to the on-ramp back north-east. Zip! That’s my direction.

At that point, I was hungry! I made my way to get some shrimp spring rolls only to find the restaurant closing the doors. The owner offered me a beer, which I declined, and went to get back on my bike. Bowie’s “Rebel, Rebel” wafted through the almost closed doors and  took me back to high school days.

There was a cemetery I used to go to for quiet time. Who is going to bother you at a cemetery, after all? Two friends were buried there. One was the older brother of a close friend of mine who had taken his own life. The other was a girl who had been in a drunken car accident. At sixteen years old, I didn’t quite know what it all meant. I still don’t, but I have a firmer grasp on my mortality than I did back then. Just north of the gravestones ran an old railroad track. A few abandoned rail cars grew mossy over the years and provided an excellent space for dissatisfied teens to hang out. A close friend and I lugged an old recliner chair into a car we had decided to claim, and she came back one day with a can of spray paint. She painted in bright red on the inside wall, so you could see it as you walked up to the train car, “Rebel, Rebel I love you so!” and “Fuck socioty!” I pointed out to her that she had misspelled “society.” We stood there for a few minutes contemplating this mistake. I decided that it was appropriate for the sentiment. She pulled out a joint.

Since the restaurant was closed, and I was still hungry, I put my helmet back on and rode home with the strains of “Rebel, Rebel” singing in my head. I rode a little over 100 miles tonight, just to clear my head. I write a lot about Why We Ride and rarely include the unique effects it can have on ones psyche.

Between the pull of the crazy moon – it’s almost full after all – and the long ride, I’m ready to sleep soundly.

It’s a lovely night out. A mild 98*F or so. Good night for a ride.

I was on my bike thinking about how lax I’ve been in posting to razorgirls.org lately. It seems that I write here when I’m feeling especially inspired, nostalgic, for a project update, or a trip report. But rarely do I write just to think out loud.

Inspiration has been slow coming these past few months, my project bike is on hold, I haven’t been on any trips as of late (well, I guess I did go to New York a couple of months ago…), and as for nostalgia, well, it’s become more and more apparent that the old refrain “you can never go home again” has lasted this long as a tired cliché for a reason, so why harp on it? Because we can’t help ourselves but to remember those bittersweet days of youth. Songs are written about it, movies are made about it, writers write about it. I am no exception.

I have been missing home something bad lately, but just visiting doesn’t do the trick. I need a way-back machine to take me back to the steamy, irresponsible, wandering summers of my rebellious teen years.

This particular nostalgic thread has been flitting in and out of my over-taxed brain for a while now. Stress does wonderful things to the wishful thinking lobe in our brain. I think if they looked at the brain under a machine that goes “ping!” they would find that the wishful thinking area lights up the more stress it undergoes.

(it is also becoming painfully obvious that I need a keyboard attachment to my iPad if I’m going to continue to write anything longer than a Facebook update cuz this touch keyboard is a pain in the ass.)

On that note, I’m going to post this now and hopefully will motivate to post a more interesting piece once I get to a keyboard.