H.P Lovecraft

H.P Lovecraft (HPL) died before the age of 50 without a lot of fuss from cancer.  He never dragged himself out of poverty but seemed to live a fairly well paced life writing a lot of letters and some cracking good horror yarns (you can keep the poems).

He could look back on a failed marriage and a largely failed writing career (if you take prosperity as a measure of success).

Since his death his horror writing (weird tales for sure) have never been out of print and due to uncertain copyright issues can be found readily on the internet.  He would be rich by now if he had lived (which would have been impressive as he would be getting on for 120 years old).

He was a racist.

He was born Aug 20th 1890. Hence this blog entry.

The thing about him which intrigues me beyond all else is the the anecdote that he kept a bottle of poison (cyanide?) with him at all times so he could end his life at the moment of his own choosing.

I like this idea very much, although I take solace in the fact there is always a handy window from which to leap, not for me the melodrama of poison vials.

What is interesting about HPL and this bottle is he never drank it.  He had more reason than most to take a swig of the thing but despite a life of genteel failure in the end he chose to die of some rather painful cancer.

So given the power to end your own life at your own choosing when is it you should choose to do so?

Anytime will do of course but that is part of the problem.

Should you when your life is at its lowest ebb?

Or do you decide, well it is going to get better from this point on and live on.

In HPL’s case it was not going to get better and he knew it.  So did he just decide the activity of killing himself was just too much effort given nature was going to do it for him without any effort on his part.

So if you don’t kill yourself when life is at it’s worst, then perhaps when life is at its best.  This arrangement would suit churches, as weddings and funeral services could just be rolled into one great orgy of celebration and despair and no need to send out extra invites.

This seems ludicrous also.

Which only leaves the option of just randomly killing yourself, but life seems to be so much more random (check the newspapers).

Perhaps fiddling with the natural order of things is a bad idea.  It seems as if there is never a good time to die.  This is heartening only if it was an optional extra you could turn down.

Nebulous voice: “Do you want the dying option sir?”
Me:”No thanks, I’ll stick with the standard eternal life package”

Suicide is of course looked on very dimly by the Church (despite the clear benefits outlined above) and the law is not so impressed with it either.  It seems rather odd these institutions have sanctions against those wishing to kill themselves.

Over the years I have spent many an hour wondering what the optimal height is for the window from which I can hurl myself.  I don’t say this too shock, I am well past those youthful years when shocking people seemed a worthwhile pursuit.

Too low and you risk a variety of ignominious results from looking foolish to crippled.  Too high and it appears you have rather too long to consider your imminent death at which point most survivors have explained they had changed their minds half way down.

Getting it right is serious stuff, lets face it.

It might be one of those things in which there is no optimal height, one of those little cosmic jokes the universe is so filled with.  Or would it be more funny if there was a church tower built at the optimal height?

Studies suggest a penalty spot is placed a fraction too close to a goalkeeper.  The goalkeeper has to guess which way the ball goes before it is kicked.  If he does not, the ball will be in the back of the net before he ever reaches it with the despairing dive.  The length of the cricket pitch however is just long enough that the cricketer has time to take in the ball and wallop it for six without need for guesswork.

HPL was good friends with Robert E Howard.  He wrote Conan the Barbarian.  A life long depressive he killed himself with a .38 after visiting his Mother in hospital to be told she was not going to recover.

Although he must have shot himself at point blank range (difficult to be more than an arms length without elaborate ceremony lets face it) he still managed to miss enough to linger for eight hours.

One of the pleasures of walking is you get to turn these sort of odd little facts over in your mind.

A BT advert used to say “it’s good to talk” they would say that wouldn’t they. 

It’s better to think.

“Only thoughts which come from walking have any value”

Nietzsche