From dawn@interlog.com Fri Aug 25 19:41:08 PDT 1995 I have always understood, at the deeper level where the words don't clarify anything, the fascination with blood and bleeding. Blood is the carrier for vitality, for life. It's not just the exposed nerve endings that make bleeding a painful thing, and the pain is a glorious affirmation. Blood is one of power's manifestations. The hopeless suicide will demonstrate his feeling of powerlessness by cutting down, not across: that I have never been at ease with, except by the fool's equivocation that this final bleeding is a denial of the power they could possess if they only dared. Despair must dull the suicide's sense of power or the blood would never run entirely out. Despair never drove me to bleeding, though she lured me into her clinging arms long and often enough to taste a variety of other flavours of damage, some nearly as sweet as warm blood. I have bled long and deep on purpose, always to remind myself of that power and never to die. There are scars I can look at and remember the welling ruby of veins, the pulsing urgency of arteries: I look at them with pride and an old man's fondness. Now the blood doesn't run so thick and vital in me. When it rushes of a sudden I must lie down in the silent dark for hours in agony. And I haven't bled in the longest time, not one drop. Maybe it's time for that knife. Give it here, please. --d pale as a spirit