Occasionally I Contemplate Murder

To give life, and to take it.

So, of course they're related. The two opposing ends of a line. Could it be in this relation that we may find an explanation as to how murder is at all possible?

Think of it:

We reproduce in such a fashion, man and woman, that we're led to believe we are the creators of new life. It really seems as if we're making our offspring, all by ourselves.

Well, if the birth of a human being is nothing but the joining of an egg and a sperm, then I guess we do have the right to call ourselves creators. Unto our offspring, we are the Gods.

For sure, we frequently treat our children in such a manner, and demand of them to treat us accordingly. Creator and creation.

Then, if we regard ourselves as the makers of life, we naturally feel entitled to be the ones breaking it, as well. We start lives, so we end them, too. It makes obvious sense.

If we didn't see reproduction as an accomplishment of our own, it would probably be impossible for us to consider, much less to commit murder.

We are the victims of unavoidable hubris.

Maybe this state of affairs even makes us feel entitled, yes, quite obliged, to end lives as frequently as we commence them. In search of balance.

In fact, if we can be accused of actually ending lives in the act of murder, then we must be said to start them in intercourse. We are worth as much praise for the latter, as we're given blame for the former.

Balance.

es, murder is magic, as is life.

It takes two to make a baby, whether or not that making is the real act of creation. It also takes two, evidently, to commit murder:

The killer and the victim.

One could regard the act of murder as a sort of rape, enforcing the will of one upon the other. A rape bringing death instead of new life.

Yet, I'm such a superstitious man, I believe that neither kind of rape can be performed without some sort of agreement between the participants.

The sexual rape is an act of forced penetration, where the woman is pierced. This piercing is very hard to accomplish, if she's not to any extent surrendering to it.

Of course, she doesn't surrender willingly. But somehow her muscles must be - however minutely - weakened by the distraction of surrender, for the piercing to be at all possible.

Ironically, the woman's main surrender may be a disbelief in her own powers.

Perhaps most women do it as a paying of ransom. They accept one malice, in order to avoid another, more permanent one - namely the other kind of rape, that is murder.

In murder, too, the victim must be pierced, one way or the other, for his life to emanate. Also this piercing demands some kind of surrender from the target, to be at all possible.

Were the victim's lust for life solid and without any flaw - then the bullet would miss, the knife would slip, the poison would immediately return the same way it entered.

Indeed, it's impossible to kill someone who does not at all want to die.

That's why some people tend to survive incidents, which are overwhelmingly likely to be fatal.

They step out unharmed from demolished cars, they're crawling up from the water a full twenty-four hours after their boats were wrecked, and stand up after tumbling down a stairway of one hundred steps. It happens more frequently than chance alone could really allow for.

Not to mention how people can drive their cars for years, or be daring pedestrians in city traffic, or get heavily drunk thousands of times, without having any dangerous incidents at all. What spell encases them?

Lust for life.

On the other hand, it's not an unbreakable capsule. From time to time, in the grinding pains of life's many little wounds, in the fatiguing cognisance of day to day monotony - who doesn't, occasionally, want to die?

A murderer with a sense of timing, would find his prey easily convinced.

Also, the very disappointment in finding oneself the target of such intent, discovering that one is so despised, or such an impenetrable obstacle in the route of another - that alone can enforce the wish.

If someone wants me dead, so much that he dares break the laws of both Heaven and earth to have it done - why not let him? Why stand in his way?

Refusal would feel like a theft of sort, just as much as the act of murder does. He wants to take my life, and I want to keep it.

What really gives me the right over him?

Thus, not at all rarely, we are content to become martyrs. If someone wholeheartedly wants me dead, then, alas, so be it!

How to get the book

At Amazon US:

At Amazon UK:

Now also a Kindle ebook: