The voices in the library

[flugendorf]

Unfortunately it is necessary for me to say something about some states before I can say anything about moving beyond them... 
Quickly, then.  
The bout of extreme SAD, or sudden depression, seems to have substantially gone, and, fortunately, even more so with that bizarre encounter with the call of the void.  

It wasn't just "about" one thing, it was about three different things or more, in semi-sequence, but with each thing it wanted to enlist my mind and tell me that that one thing was indeed the thing, and was the solid basis, and that that was all-encompassing.  Whether I should simply call it depression or blame S.A.D. even more than I have, it was a general collapse or catastrophe of the spirit.

One early jolt that helped begin to break (blast!) me out of it in a big way was the unexpected compound misunderstanding with Christy and some strangenesses in it, in particular my too-literal wrong reading of the word "clingy" and astonishment at some things.  I wouldn't have wished that on anyone - let alone me or her - but... it is reconfirmed that nothing seems as antithetical to depression as unexpected straightforward anger. 

For me real surprise piss-off is rare and shocking (my clashes with Mom are too accustomed to have this effect) - and, for me, it was like unexpectedly sneezing through a part of my brain that I'd almost forgotten and feeling/remembering that that part of my brain was there.  Like suddenly remembering I had nasal passages. And I can't be depressed while furious. Whole different state of consciousness! - which, as it fades, leaves the fortunately broken spell, because depression tries to tell you that it is the only state that there is.

But this is only an acute fix.  (And it is undesirable.)  (And it only disrupted the trajectory, though probably the disruption was decisive.)  I think the real thing... which is not precisely useful, or not directly, because when you're actually in the pit of despond you cannot steer toward it, but it's a good thing if you happen to find yourself there... is that, in increasing the distance between you and the pit, it's a good thing to remember that when I'm depressed I'm thinking too much about myself. I'm what's for breakfast and lunch and dinner.

So if I want to avoid depression, or avoid a relapse into it, I should for God's sake think about things that aren't me.

And Donald Trump doesn't do it, because, if there is a recipe for ending up focused on my own helpless agony and et cetera, it is that blowhole in a long tie. 

And I'll use him as shorthand for so much right now that does the same thing.  Long story.  Too long.

So.  

 

People. Certain people.

I wouldn't be so disappointed about people in general if I didn't like people so much.  I am the weirdest anti-social person in history, if that's even what I am.  I dig people.  Almost all particular people.  I even dig the people who put my brain in the microwave - other things about them, and people have lots of things about them.  But part of what keeps me sane and liking people, and also keeps me able to have multiple mental/personality-ish coats to put on, is thinking in depth about people I find really interesting.

Who am I thinking about right now? By accident, but not quite by accident, it is Russell Kirk, that crusty, pocket-watch-wearing near-inventor of American conservatism as a thing in the '50s (who knows what he would think of his children now) who wrote those wonderful ghost stories.  And a step further - I am thinking about Edmund Burke, that nineteenth-century British conservative about whom Kirk wrote a biography.

 

I would like to read more of both of them.  I actually have a collection of Burke, and - is a book of Kirk's hiding around here somewhere?

Not because I see things the way they do. I don't.  But there is a combination of ... I always find ways to mutate my own sentence structure.  Two things.  The very remarkable differences from me are part of why I would like to read them right now.  And at the same time - something about them does not seem extraordinarily different at all.  The specific way in which they seemed sometimes to grapple with things seems familiar to me.  To my own grappling attempts at the question:  How do you be a person?  What do you do with this life thing going forward?  How do you look at it?

And, damn, I would like to start delving into examples - Burke's statement to the crowd about being a representative, the Hastings thing, an amazing appalling error he made when thinking about humane treatment for slaves - but it's too soon; I need a refresher on him and I need to read more of him!  This is just the crackle of interest.  Same with Kirk.  I can't even put what I'd want to say about Kirk into a box.

How to be a man, yes, that's a rephrasing that should come up with these two; one predates feminism and one was probably no member at all.  I struggled over whether to say "probably" there - that didn't seem quite right - because these are odd ducks; I feel sure that they would both be thoroughly traditional in completely untraditional ways.  Which is hard to pin down.  But to some degree "how to be a man" would generalize to how to be a person.  And/but...

And, for that matter, what women would I add to the stack of these interesting people I would like to go and spend time with? Curious instant ping - I thought of Flannery O'Connor right away. Is it just that I saw her referred to recently? (Did I?) And another is that - oh, that's just annoying, that female mathematics professor-without-official-standing, the one who Einstein said had game.  Not only do I have to somehow identify her (I can't even remember the country), there is the question of how much about her I could really understand.  I'm not a mathematician.  But she stuck in my craw for some reason.

Doris Lessing's too good and too fresh; I've already read her, and I'm not going to get a bigger imprint.  And I've already read that wonderful old biddy in the Philadelphia cemetery, although she'd be easy to reread.

It's hard for books I've already read to have the full impact, which means to turn my whole head on for the full mind-meld with them as speakers and them as subjects.  That history of the Second World War I got in Seattle was amazing - a terrific encounter with the particular players' struggles with the history-pervading problem of inexperience and lost knowledge and errors.  But it wouldn't have the same hit if I opened it now.  I have antibodies.  Or something.  (Should I relate this to how psychedelics eventually seem to have trouble jogging you out of your ruts as much? I have no idea.)

And I'd like to read The History of the Peloponnesian Wars.  It's just been lying there waiting.  (Too bad I've already run into filthy smartass Martial.)  

God, I remember reading that Joseph Conrad omnibus.  I was stunned.  The mind on him - I thought at the time, that strangely modern voice and eye!   But mind has always been modern.  (To think otherwise is lazily parochial and just unkind - as borked as (some) people in 17th century England thinking the "native" "savages" had to be guided or else they'd just wander around and try to eat rocks.)

Yeah. Time to encounter a new very old conversation.  Tonight I'll try to find one of those damn collections.  I wish they were all the size of A Conrad Argosy.  I'd have no trouble.

There's a sense in which I'm hoping Russell and Burke will help lead me back to a larger general focus - but that's two or three steps down the road.

 

Here's to old new voices.