So, the next chapter in Solomon’s The Noonday Demon has been devoted to breakdowns. Previously, I wasn’t convinced of all the accolades references to this book being a thriller, but I now understood what they meant. I quickly read this chapter. I kept wondering, will he make it? How would the breakdown happen at this point? You’re driven to wonder–like he was–what are the reasons for these breakdowns? Are there discernible precursors? In some cases yes, but the more harrowing answer is, more often, no. There are no necessary causes for his depression. His life was just as difficult and as easy as any other. I remember the adage from my Psych 101 classes: “The same fire that melts the butter, hardens the egg.” The same stimulus has wildly varying effects on each of us and across time as well. Bummer. But, perhaps that teaches us a little more forbearance too. Sometimes (not always), the empirical mind is at a loss to diagnose its problems. But then Solomon also points out that while we may be able to diagnose the problem (his therapist and he had arrived at a diagnosis of depression very early on his treatment), it is entirely a different project to treat the problem.

Speaking of treatment, I’m going to see Pan’s Labyrinth with an old friend tonight. G– is very dear to me but she appears to be in a pretty low place right now. Work, love, and family pretty much sucks for her right now. So, my project is to be cheerful, buy her a movie ticket, and forget a bit. Hopefully, it will bring her a little peace. The book has taught me that the first course is to listen, almost aggressively so, and only offer advice if invited or with some qualification. With some effort, I should be able to manage that.

P.S. I just read that Molly Ivins died. This saddens me more than I anticipated. I guess deep down I thought I would see her speak or something. I’ve seen her in television interviews and I always liked her wit and style. I can’t imagine how much it sucked to have to endure breast cancer as she did. I am invigorated by her adage: “Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don’t much care for.” Anthony Zurcher’s tribute includes this vignette:

She was known for hosting unforgettable parties at her Austin home, which would feature rollicking political discussions, and impromptu poetry recitals and satirical songs. At one such event, I noticed her dining table was littered with various awards and distinguished speaker plaques, put to use as trivets for steaming plates of tamales, chili and fajita meat. When I called this to her attention, Molly matter-of-factly replied, “Well, what else am I going to do with ‘em?”

She’s the sort of Southern, old-style, liberal woman I admire. She also seemed fond of the lines from Alice in Wonderland:

Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the [Red] Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

It’s always been a line that I cherish as well.

My friends tell me that I should really write more. They tell me that I’m a born writer. I’ve always hated them for it. I’ve always prided myself on being considered inveterate, impenetrable. I don’t like being nailed without my consent. But there it’s been: You are a writer. F—K them. Yet, they are a steadfast and clever bunch (After all, what other sort would I cultivate?) and only periodically suggest “I really should write some of this down.” They usually let long periods of time go by before saying something for fear I might say, “If you’re so goddamned bored with me, why don’t you just say so?” or some other rude statement. And so this has been.

The other day I picked up a copy of The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon (It is presumptuously subtitled: The Atlas of Depression). I bought this at Borders with bf and I can tell you that the purchase was a real triumph of will. Normally, I purchase three books and add them to the shelves of Those I Feel Ashamed For Buying and Not Reading. In this case, I picked up a couple of books, put them in bf’s basket, came back later, took them out, put one back in, cycled around, picked up a few more, put them in the basket, walked away, took them all out, and lastly put Solomon in. I’m sure bf had certain questions of sanity. I put the excuse of “It’s for our friend…” on my tongue in case of a quizzical look. None was expressed. Immediately, I became ambivalent about the purchase.

So, I have been reading it carefully. In fact, I’ve only made it through the 38 pages of the first chapter which exhibits Solomon’s meditations on depression and the world’s concept of it. I know that better books are cleverly designed traps wherein you start arguing with the author immediately. “Depression is the flaw in love.” See that? I know that if I become so argumentative somebody has hit a nerve. Apparently Solomon hit my tap root. The question is simple: Am I depressed? In comparison to my friends, absolutely not. I have had episodes of depression. They were big, heavy. They passed. But depression–its taxonomies and definitions–is seductive and subtle. As Solomon analogizes, our psyches are like trees, overgrown by the vines of depression to the point that our psyches have been fundamentally changed and do not exist properly without those vines. Likewise, even if we cut the vines away, once exposed to depression our personalities usually bear some mark and/or change that we are likely to ignore or deny. Aren’t we all then depressed? Do I dare refute? What are the losses in accepting that attribution? I am not certain that Solomon would say that depression is ubiquitous for everyone in the world. But I believe he would agree that depression is now a normal consequence of living. Of course, this depressing analysis becomes a little self-fulfilling.

More to say, but tired….

For Later Consideration:
- Confessions of a Depressive, or Isn’t That Redundant in a Blog?
- Days and Nights in Azeroth, or The Solace is Numbness
- Better Living through On-Line Gaming
- Sex with Friends (Male)
- WWYTS (What Would Your Therapist Say?)
- I Love Donnie Darko! I Love Hoodies! Coincidence?
- The Enemy of Perfection is “Good Enough”, Yet We Know That Perfection Is Whoring With Depression…

Being sick does tend to elongate things. It’s been the weekend, but I’m entirely “done” with this sore throat. Every morning has required a throat lube (not in a good way) and I’m getting a little bored with feeling comfortable in sleeping half the day. Hopefully, today will be the end. I had some thoughts of having bf check my throat out but then nixed the idea since he would probably pass out. Sigh, to be stuck with a faint-hearted gay man…

So, Julius Caesar. Patrick Stewart was not in it. I didn’t finish rereading the play and its analysis. It’s comforting to know that even the best of the best can act their asses off and still come up with a Shakespearean play that begins fine but ends kinda tedious. It was probably the throat that made me want to take a nap from Act 3 onward.

I did read some analysis that helped: This was Shakespeare’s first play at the Globe. Johnson thought Shakespeare had gaffed a couple of the lines meters. Some thought it was originally a comedy, not a tragedy. Originally, the costuming was anachronistic at times (guards and soldiers would be in Elizabethan dress). I noted some other anachronisms: No clocks or books in classical Rome, Brutus puts a robe on over his armor (that’d be comfortable to sleep in), the names pronounced with English intonation, not Latin (but now I’m getting picky), etc. But I think this is a limitation of Shakespeare’s historical plays (although this is not listed as one). He has source material–Plutarch–and for the most part he follows it. Yes, he makes some editorial decisions about what works better on the stage, but that’s his job. He was working before the “re-enactments” of The History Channel and entertainment was scarce to the commoners.

What I enjoyed most was TreeTown’s devotion to the Secular Divine. TreeTown denizens read the New York Times. They usually consider themselves agnostics (what right-minded hippy or academic would allow themselves the foolishness of being religious). And they reserve a special love for Shakespeare. All of his work was taught to them as sacred. They do their homework and laugh and chortle at the appropriate parts (“mender of soles”, indeed!). I believe they were raised to feel a little guilty if they didn’t say something glowing about whatever Shakespeare play they saw. We really should begin performances by saying an “Our Shakespeare, Who Art In Heaven”. In some ways, it is a better outfitted RenFest (Yes, I saw a cloak and dammit I want one too). And a critical thought is nary to be seen.

I was raised by religious who didn’t put much stock in divinity as given. They preferred to begin with reason to see how far it could take you. Mysteries, both secular and religious, did exist, but you didn’t start there. In a related way, I never hopped onto the “Shakespeare is Divine” bus driven by Harold Bloom, of course. The irony is that some Shakespeare scholars (and TreeTowners) would recoil at the analogy. They are still very much reasonable, they would say. But when you see their eyes glaze over when they talk about some scene, anyone who has seen a religious person in the midst of ecstasy would note similarities. To simplify my point, I like some of Shakespeare, even parts of Julius Caesar (Marc Anthony’s speech after Brutus should be in every public speaking textbook), but like the biblical authors Shakespeare, too, had an agenda and all of the work does not bear up to the same standard. Our reward comes from valuing that merit, not merely accepting it.

So now I have a smaller font in my blogwriter. Thank the Lady! Anyhow, I woke up with one of those throats that make you really consider carefully before you swallow. It’s not sore but my glands are swollen and feel like I have half-sized golf balls lodged there. My sore throats tend to take the annoying track of one side getting infected and then the other, not both at once. This time we started on my left and magisterially moved to my right. Sigh. But in other news, I finally mastered my oven’s nasty habit of torching my muffins (the rack was too close to the lower element). It’s muffins and tea to move the phlegm. It sounds almost British.

Speaking of which, I am dying to see Helen Mirren in The Queen. I’ve watched her a couple times in HBO’s Elizabeth and with Wikipedia learned a great deal about the British monarchy. It’s always good to be informed and entertained. Unfortunately, it looks highly unlikely that I will get to see her today. I had half-crazed notions of going to see it yesterday, but I’m glad that apathy won. Today, there is a high tea ceremony before the movie (TreeTown is nothing without its snobs ) but that unfortunately conflicts with the Shakespeare performance. Drat, what fun would it be to observe my neighbors in high drama!

I should get back to my online reading of Julius Caesar. It’s hard work being a snob, especially if you want to remain more snobbish than your snob-pretender neighbors.

Couple thoughts that I should attend to later:

• How do I feel about maintaining an explicit anonymity here? Is it really worth it to keep friends and locations, technically, vague?
• TreeTown Observer had a couple of really good articles. One on small businesses here (good competitive suggestions) and one on people here with doctorates who don’t use them (made me happy that the market is extremely grim).

15 mins is up. Maybe more later.

Yeah, yeah, been busy and thought I should try to spend at least 20 mins. getting the many things that pass as thoughts on electrons. The other things that helps is that I’ve had a sore throat for the last few days. This is a good thing. I took it easy. I worked to make myself appear to be a “pleasant” sick person rather than a “cranky” one. This is something that the bf believes I’ve done. Kinda true but that is more a historical argument. Anywho, here I am.

Tomorrow, I get to play starf*cker and go see the perennial demigod Patrick Stewart in Julius Caesar. He’s moonlighting in our sticks with the Royal Shakespeare Company to perform this week. (BTW, I wasted 10 mins looking for a spell-checker for my new weblog posting sw–Performancing in Firefox–and installing a timer but I reset the clock). So, I did the usual: read some gay fiction, read some Shakespeare analysis and part of the play concurrently (got through Act 1 out of 5–not so good), watched Pumpkinhead 2 on SciFi (I just couldn’t stop watching the terrible work), deboned the lovely chicken soup that bf had made for me, showered, slept, played a RealArcade game called Mystery Case Files for too long (R, you’d LOVE it), tempted to watch Pumpkinhead 3, missed my friends D from Amsterdam and S & K from California who were in town. Eventful and yet nothing really happened.

What else has been new of late, well, note to self, R & S came in and it was very good to see her. She then went on to walk a half-marathon. 13 miles ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at, I always say. I’ve made some progress in relearning how to be a friend with RK. That’s been a rather nice turn. I’m busy, she’s busy and as long as I respect that I think we’ll be good.

Weight training went to hell this past week and it does bother me tremendously. I’ve been very good about keeping the fat content very low until this week. Sickness gave me a pass to indulge, so I told myself.

I had a very nice, little party for bf last weekend. Twenty-four people showed up and I found that as long as I focused on hosting. I didn’t want to kill everyone. Keep the drinks coming and keep the conversation thin. All turned out rather nicely with four birthday cakes and the appropriate number of candles (nothing that an altar boy hasn’t dealt with before) for all the October boys. Everyone was touched and thrilled. We also now have more wine than we will need for the next year. C’est la vie.

Idle thought: I love this cold, dreary weather. It’s the perfect time to be stuffy.

I do have some deeper stuff that I need to rag about but I’m reaching my quota and I want to be full in control of stopping at that 20 minute mark. So there. And so ends daylight savings time for here.

powered by performancing firefox