On January 1st 2010, the NPR essay sounded paranoid. Now it's a mushy dot in everyone's brain -- it looks like a button almost no one wants to push. If you are a human who might want to disappear, you wouldn't necessarily want to take the world with you.
There are enough self-haters who wouldn't mind doing that, but they are held in place by the gravitation of an unearned kindness.
There are two kinds of self-hating suicidal humans: the ones who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge on the side overlooking the city, and the ones who fly into the open Pacific. The city-facing jumpers think: You didn't want me! See what you did! The Pacific fliers are believers in the cosmic embrace: take me waters to where my kind came from!
In between them stands the Golden Gate Bridge, a magnificent masterwork of engineering indifference. The city of San Francsco installed wire nets to catch would-be suicides.I'm not sure the motives were entirely concern for life. Part of it had to be a defense against those last words. And throwing a shadow on tourism. But, hey, walk from one side to another, from the past to the future or vice-versa: your selfies will circle the globe. Attentive observers might find inadvertent shades.
Share this post