Sergeant Lianne Ingle met a young soldier in a Townsville club early last year. He told her he wanted to kill himself:
She said she remembered striking up a conversation by telling the man he reminded her of singer Nick Cave, but that she had never been a fan of Cave's because his morose music made her feel like "topping herself."About eight months later - three days after his 19th birthday - Ashley Baker locked himself inside a toilet cubicle at a defence base in Dili and apparently shot himself three times.
You have to wonder what drives these kids into the Army in the first place, don't you?
I asked my 11-year-old boy about anti-Emo graffiti the other day:
"What are Emos?" I asked him.In the Welsh town of Bridgend, Sean Rees, a "happy-go-lucky" 19-year-old, killed himself yesterday after a night out with friends.
"Slash-your-wrists," he replied with evident contempt.
He is believed to be the 19th person under the age of 27 to have reportedly killed themselves in the Bridgend area since the start of last year.A local councillor complained:
"We keep on asking why these young people are dying but we are not getting any answers."Is this the temper of the times? Or have things ever been thus?
In ancient Egypt, somebody once wrote a text which has survived till this day:
I opened my mouth to my soul, that I might answer what it had said: "This is too much for me today..."NB: As the sun sets in the West, so the ancient Egyptians believed that their souls too would migrate to The West after death.
My soul opened its mouth to me that it might answer what I had said: "If you think of burial, it is a sad matter... Listen to me; behold, it is good for men to hear. Follow the happy day and forget care..."
I opened my mouth to my soul that I might answer what it had said: ... "To whom can I speak today? Hearts are rapacious and everyone takes his neighbour's goods. Gentleness has perished and the violent man has come down on everyone.
To whom can I speak today? Men are contented with evil and goodness is neglected everywhere.
To whom can I speak today? He who should enrage a man by his ill deeds, he makes everyone laugh by his wicked wrongdoing.
To whom can I speak today? Men plunder and every man robs his neighbour.
To whom can I speak today? The wrongdoer is an intimate friend and the brother with whom one used to act is become an enemy.
To whom can I speak today? None remember the past...
Death is in my sight today
Like the smell of myrrh,
Like sitting under an awning on a windy day.
Death is in my sight today
Like the perfume of lotuses,
Like sitting on the shore of the Land of Drunkenness..."
What my soul said to me: "Cast complaint upon the peg, my comrade and brother; make offering on the brazier and cleave to life, according as I have said. Desire me here, thrust the West aside, but desire that you may attain the West when your body goes to earth, that I may alight after you are weary; then will we make an abode together."
