It's just me in the house for the next week - Tessa went to Texas to hang out with her grandmother and wrestle some demons, and I hate flying so much that I'll only do it if I absolutely have to. Besides, I think it will prove to be a good rest for her, with me out of her hair; this wedding and the movie have taken their toll on our good humor.
I haven't been alone in the city for what seems like years. It's reminding me of the vast, oceanic stretches of jail-like solitude I endured while living on Beachwood Avenue in Los Angeles - hot days taking forever to creep into night, scads of projects withering on the vine, and the persistent feeling of trance-like isolation.
One of the worst parts about depression is that the rut you create also becomes one of your few comforts. After a while, you don't want to make a move, because it would rob of your routine, which seems to be the only thing you can control. I also suspect that any deviation from your depression might temporarily awake you from the fuzzy stupor you've clung to, and that exposes you to all sorts of pain. This happens in conjunction with the thought that "there isn't anything better" on the other side of your move, making depression one of the most perfect, self-pollinating, perpetual motion machines possible. No wonder it's so popular.
It's easy to speak of such things right now, when I haven't been depressed. Wordsworth always said that poetry was calamitous events recalled in a time of tranquility, and the same holds for old emotions. Transitively, I am (and you are) living through a micro-era at this moment that we won't truly understand until 2009 or so. What might this one be called? "Post-Traumatic Stress Disord-a-Rama"? "The Latter Dark Ages"? "The Weimar Republic"? "A Return to Crapalcy"? "Hubert"?
Posted by at June 10, 2003 10:34 PM