I have a feeling I knew a lot more about death several years ago, contemplating suicide. Well, not "knew" a lot more, but it was much more real, more tangible. It was something. Now it's farce. My own suicide became a farce an indeterminate amount of time ago, but even death itself has now become a farce.

Maybe that should be the theme this time around. I should have themes for each suicide cycle. Nah, too much effort. Although there probably is a theme each time through, but I'm too lazy and self-conscious to figure them out.

What's going to guide it this time around? The only thing I do know is that I won't leave Taipei before some kind of serious gesture, event or attempt. Other than that, there is nothing determinate, and the old proposition holds that if I'm not executing it right now at this moment, I'm not going to do it at all. I will just continue puttering through life, one day to the next, the way it's been going.

But the thing is I will leave Taipei, so something will happen. If nothing keeps me in Taipei, I will leave, and without a good long stare in the face of my mortality, I don't have the strength or momentum to leave. I don't have the strength or momentum to just decide to leave.

Maybe it's not that death has become a farce, not that death itself has changed, death is still the same. Of course, it's just my attitude or conception of it. I've been steeping myself in the concept of death for so long, with no counteracting positive elements to give directly to my life some affirmation, that maybe deep inside I really have come to terms with and against our constructed notions of death.

Death is an interpretation and I no longer subscribe to the common notion of death, that it is in opposition to life; the antithesis. Of course it's natural, and it is an end, but it's not some ultimate end. Well, in some ways it is, but in other ways it isn't. I'm just no longer emphasizing the ways that it is.

When considering death, I end up considering life on Earth, and life on Earth will one day end. Earth is located in what is called the "Goldilocks" region away from the Sun. Not too hot, like Venus and Mercury, not too cold like Mars, but just right. It's not always going to be that way.

But being in the Goldilocks region is not just a function of distance, it's a function of time. We just happen to inhabit the planet at just the right time and place. And many other species have lived on Earth because the time and place conditions were just right for them. Climate conditions have changed over the course of millions of years, but various species still thrived.

I think I heard recently that 99.9% of species that have lived on Earth are now extinct. From our observation on this planet, species extinction is a normal part of the process of life on a planet with suitable conditions for life.

In a best case scenario, where we can assume we don't destroy Earth's habitability for humans ourselves, and not only that, but we find a way to peacefully resolve conflicts and cooperate for the benefit of all humanity, and use our resources in a sustainable, responsible way, a natural decimation of the human species is still foreseeable, although not soon, perhaps on a scale of tens of thousands of years. And that's giving credit to the human species for being particularly adaptable and clever when survival is at stake.

It just seems ludicrous and above arrogance to me that humans will still be around billions of years from now when the Sun exhausts its store of hydrogen fuel and slowly grows into a red giant, burning away whatever is left of an atmosphere so that there's no more sky, and frying the surface until it itself is melted into a molten landscape.

Humanity, as brilliant, wonderful, beautiful and miraculous as it is, and as dear as we are to us, is just not that important in the natural cycles of the universe.

Somehow I feel much more in touch with the death of humanity than a death of my individual being. I'm not a part of my surroundings, I'm not networked with the humans around me in any significant way. My death really doesn't matter. No, really. Really, really, really. I don't know if I'm making my point clear. Reeeaaallllly. I'm not even talking about me anymore, because the me that can die doesn't really exist.