22

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1628.

Entry 1

I felt better with the sun out. It leavens my depression, not lifting it completely, but enough to relieve what is otherwise unrelenting. While the sun was rea balm, I crave the darkness when I am blue. I wrap it around me like a blanket each night, and curse the longer days. While i hate the gray and darkness of winter in general, being swallowed by darkness is nature's metaphor for what I crave.  

William  styron, in Darkness visible, a memoir about his depression written well before anybody was listening to Prozac, describes the "gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain." For me it's an ache, a nagging beast reminding me I am still here. I think my flavor of depression is less acute and yet longer lasting than Stryon's, but that is only speculation. If his was a failed transmission, stopping him dead in his tracks, mine is more like haivng the low air light for the tires come on everyday, despite your filling the bastards each morning. 

 

Abby at Madame Tussauds,NYC 2015.
When night comes, Willow and I have little concerts thanks to YouTube, the speaker system on my tv, and the amazing artists I can watch. Tonight, I watched, among other things, some excellent eTown quarantine sessions with Rufus Wainwright and Brandi Carlisle covering Fairport Convention, and Colin Hay on missing drinking disguised as a song of loss. The televisions  are so clear now, the audio so perfected that it does give me solace in my self-imposed and less than splendid isolation. An aside, a live version of Baby Can I Hold You Tonight," by Tracy Chapman and Luciano Pavarotti (singing in Italian no less) just came up on the tubes. The recording, from 2000 is extraordinary in clarity and harmonics. It doesn't get weirder than this, honestly. The print is mirrored--e.g. reversed--but I believe it's from a show called "Pavarotti and Friends." The world was a strange place for a few years--it gets weirder. He just walked on stage with Barry White. This has to be Italy. Full orchestra accompanies them. No offense to White, but this kinda puts the lie to my hope that YouTube would be a panacea for what ails. Pavarotti singing Barry White in Italian is
Leiney Lu now 22.
just freakish. 

Today is Leiney's 22nd birthday. She and Jared are having raclette for dinner. Jenny had it for her birthday every single year we were together, and Leiney does it now as well, starting the week before Jenny died, if I remember correctly. That Jenny died 5 days after Leiney's birthday (6 days this year because of the extra day in February) is really hard for Leiney, and I hate it for her. We will have her birthday celebration,, cancelled due to multiple people with respiratory issues in the family yesterday, two weeks from now instead of next Sunday, the day i proposed without thinking or realizing the date. What a dumbass.

 


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