Too Late for Me, Save Yourself....

'Too Late for Me, &;#8230;.Save Yourself' by J.B. Pravda

Fear? No, not that simple, his brain deluded, chaotically cataloguing a
seeming myriad of 'reasons' for his demise; more like fatigue, not the
physical version, no, the psychic sort.

'Hell is other people' percolated to the top of the meeting's agenda,
called by a random collection of neural clusters momentarily dominated
by the Existential/Sartre delegation.

The debate turned, unannounced, of course!, to ways &; means of
self-disposal&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;consensus growing in the
direction of messiness, when even the 'Note' loomed as too
taxing.

Paradox was the problem&;#8230;..getting in the way, he concluded,
breaking up the gang of ganglia preparing, eventually, for his
swansong-----it was no good playing at the misanthrope when he more
than gave a damn about the state of humankind, especially the younger
editions, not yet counted in Life's 'Loss' column. After all the
pseudo-musing in that bathetic note about it being 'too late', and, in
the same bloody half-sentence the appeal, aimed particularly at the
youthful, of self-salvation. You needed the genuine Greek salad of
pathos and fetid choices to effect a dramatic rendezvous with
Thanatos.

This&;#8230;..this was an insult to all those who'd actually done
It!

Not even Hamlet, Bacon's contemplative little whiner was of any help;
no, the twit couldn't appreciate his advantages: strong wardrobe,
velvetine to the hilt (although, why he bothered to don a sword at all
escapes me, now that I think on it, except to make that melodramatic
quietus after all his true nemeses had bought it
bigtime)&;#8230;&;#8230;really thorny relationship with Ophelia
now gone safely platonic, heightened perception of false friends (okay,
so Horatio is constant&;#8230;..constantly the sychophant, you ask
me----'sweet prince', indeed) not to mention Fortinbras's availability
to help out a fellow Nordic at the drop of, well, several derelict
Danes!!

'To be, or&;#8230;&;#8230;': can anyone say 'decision by
indecision'; it suddenly dawned on him that, far from compiling his
endless list of Life's grievances he had stumbled, no thanks to his
second-rate neurons and their indecisive pondering, upon a growing list
of unfinished, or, dare he 'think' it-----knowing what he now knew
about 'those' to whom he usually entrusted that overrated
exercise-----heretofore UNCHARTED pathways to ameliorating the wrongs
of the World&;#8230;&;#8230;&;#8230;.fascinating (the use of
that term caused quite a commotion among the heretofore optimistic
regions of his frontal lobes) means of pragmatic meliorism!

What, hunger wasn't essentially a problem of distribution, with a
healthy dose of applied Game Theory?! Or&;#8230;&;#8230;or global
conflicts, even long-standing tribal disputes, even where 'God', it was
insisted, was some partisan cheerleader or granter of real estate
rights, they couldn't be dealt with using ever-sophisticated, even
mathematical formulae made famous by really smart Nobel Prize winners,
including that guy with bloody schizophrenia?

No&;#8230;.yes, he conjured, there was much to do, so little time;
reasons, real reasons to live, rejoice, rejoice!

As he rose from his seat of seemingly endless bemusement, all his
powers united aglow with the prospects ahead, just beyond his now
invigorated hands and mind.

One of those gleeful hands, it eventuated, had betrayed him, along with
the now defunct committee on ways &; means of self-slaughter, it
having turned the knob of the door to his study, previously
booby-trapped with the patiently waiting cocked trigger of his
twelve-gauge shotgun, now having transferred its full load to what used
to be his, only recently, joyful heart.