Juneteenth is tomorrow, as Sherry points out. That may be subject touched on in this literature anthology, but I would have assumed it was mentioned in this little history book, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History, if I hadn’t searched for it in vain. Perhaps Come Juneteenth by Ann Rinaldi and Juneteenth, A Celebration of Freedom by Charles A. Taylor said all there was to say about it.
Long, long post
I’m pretty sure I figured out the proximate cause of my depression attack.
It was this.
A YouTube video of Linda Ronstadt singing “Long, Long Time.” (This is a truncated version, by the way, omitting the plaintive third verse so the producers could fit 20 seconds more of valuable commercial time into the slot.)
One of my favorite songs of all time. It’s so beautiful. So poignant. So evocative.
And it makes me feel so very, very sorry for myself.
LOVE WILL ABIDE; TAKE THINGS IN STRIDE.
SOUNDS LIKE GOOD ADVICE BUT THERE’S NO ONE AT MY SIDE.
Takes me back, that does, to my year-and-a-half of servitude at a country radio station. It was a country station in two senses. Not only did it follow a Nashville format, but it was actually located in the country, out among the cornfields in rural Wisconsin.
The managers did at least one thing for the announcers that was kind of nice. They’d approved a work schedule that allowed each of us to enjoy a full, two-day weekend—once every three weeks. If you’ve ever worked radio, you’ll know that’s pretty rare. Radio announcers are assumed to be doing “fun” work—“Heck, I’d pay them to let me do this!” says the company man—so a ten hour day and a six day week is pretty standard. (I used to say that if I’d known about this before I got in, I’d have just become a migrant worker and saved the expense of broadcast school).
But this schedule required one weekend guy, on rotation, to work a pretty brutal weekend schedule. Part of that schedule involved doing the sign-off on Saturday night (at midnight) and then being back in to sign on again Sunday morning (6:00 a.m.).
When I had one of those weekends, I’d sweeten the ordeal by signing off with “Long, Long Time” the last thing Saturday night. This would put me in the mood to drive home alone in the darkness to the trailer I rented (and couldn’t afford to heat properly), and lie in the embrace of insomnia, running those lyrics through my head and thinking back six years to The One That Got Away, The Bus I Missed, After Which There Were No More Buses…
CAUGHT IN MY FEARS; BLINKING BACK THE TEARS…
I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life as the day I called her to ask her out. I first met her when she was next-door neighbor to a friend and his wife, living in residential houses converted to apartments on a college campus. She was studying drama, and she asked my friend to take a part in a one-act play she had to direct for a class. “And do you think Lars would be willing to take a small part?” she asked him.
“No, I don’t think so,” my friend said. “But if you’ve got a large part you haven’t cast, he’d probably do that.”
And so I worked with her on the play (a cut of Anouilh’s Antigone, if you’re curious), and the more time I spent with her, the more I realized that, although I’d originally thought her skinny and kind of horse-faced, she was in fact slender and graceful, and she had the kind of grave beauty I associate with Pre-Raphaelite paintings. She was funny and smart and spontaneous, and one day I realized I was falling in love with her, and I did not fight it one little bit.
And so I said to myself, “You’ve got to ask her out. There’s no chance that a woman this wonderful is ever going to just drop into your life this way again.”
I was 23 years old. I’d never asked a girl out before.
WAIT FOR THE DAY YOU’LL GO AWAY;
KNOWIN’ THAT YOU WARNED ME OF THE PRICE I’D HAVE TO PAY…
A spring afternoon in 1974 (the following year). It must have been late May or early June, because she went away that June. I called her (I could have just walked over and asked [I’d shrewdly taken over my friend’s apartment]. But somehow it was easier to call first) and asked if she wanted to walk down to the Dairy Queen.
“Well, I guess I could,” she said. “Just a minute.”
A few moments later she said, “OK, I just subtracted the money from my trip budget.” (She was a missionary kid, and she was going back to see her parents.)
“I’m paying,” I said.
“No, no,” she replied. “I’ve written it down now. I’m not going to go to the trouble of adding it back in.”
So we took our walk. I tried to memorize every moment; every word. Soon she’d be gone, and she wouldn’t be back for eight weeks. Eight weeks seemed like forever.
AND LIFE’S FULL OF LOSS; WHO KNOWS THE COST?
LIVIN’ IN THE MEMORY OF A LOVE THAT NEVER WAS…
When we got back we sat on her front step and talked. Somehow the conversation turned to the old bromide that goes, “If you love something, let it go. If it does not come back to you, it was never yours in the first place.” I said I agreed with that.
“I talked to my mother about that once,” she said. “I told her, ‘If you really love someone, you have to give them their freedom.’
“And she said, ‘No. If you love someone you want them with you forever.’”
‘CAUSE I’VE DONE EVERYTHING I KNOW
TO TRY AND CHANGE YOUR MIND;
AND I THINK I’M GONNA MISS YOU FOR A LONG, LONG TIME…
After she flew away, I got letters from her. She wanted to be pen pals. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity.
In one letter she said she’d like to stay in that country, if people weren’t waiting for her back here.
I told her she should do what she felt was best for herself. I hoped she didn’t think anyone was trying to force her to do anything she didn’t want to.
So she didn’t come back.
And then she got engaged to a guy over there.
And I’ve always wondered—had she told me what she really wanted, that evening 33 years ago this month? Had she been telling me she wanted a man who had the strength to say, “Come back to me. I need you in my life”?
I’ve wondered for a long, long time. But I’ll never know.
We have no shelter from our sin
When penitential grief has wept
O’er some foul dark spot,
One only stream, a stream of blood,
Can wash away the blot.
Lift up Thy bleeding hand, O Lord,
Unseal that cleansing tide;
We have no shelter from our sin
But in Thy wounded side.
(a modern hymn by Cecil Alexander)
A Nursery Rhyme
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Free Audiobook Today Only
Audible.com is offering a free audiobook with a 14-day trial subscription today only. Could be worthwhile.
Guidebook to Purgatory
It was a nice two days, anyway.
But I couldn’t expect my depression to stay away for much more than that.
What I’m experiencing now isn’t a bottomless, cosmic cold sore, like last week’s depression. But it’s a definite downturn. And that (plus the fact that I’m stuck for other material) gives me an excuse to post a little essay about depression I’ve been thinking out. I justify this in two ways. One, I’m going to make a literary comparison. Two, some of you may be writers who don’t know much about deep depression (or is that an oxymoron?) and I hope to clarify exactly what the experience feels like. For the record.
One of the most notable (and surprising) characteristics of a truly ripe depression is the sense of clarity it seems to give.
Deep depression is like Occam’s Razor, a simple, elegant answer to the whole messy problem.
It’s like the “payoff” in a classic mystery. You know the scene where the detective gathers all the suspects and explains everything, extending an accusing finger at the true culprit (who generally pulls out a hidden gun and forces the detective to dispense quick justice)?
When you’re deeply depressed, you look over your whole life—everything you’ve done and experienced, and you say, “Oh, that explains it. It’s all so simple.” It’s like that moment of clarity one imagines one has just before one dies. Which, the depressee feels, is likely to happen any minute.
So it resembles the payoff in a mystery, as stated above, but the mystery isn’t an English Cozy, or even a Thirties Hard-boiled. It’s a Noir, directed by a Frenchman
I suppose it’s a little like the experience of LSD users. I don’t know about this from experience, but I’m told that musicians (for instance) who performed under the influence of the drug thought they were producing brilliant stuff. And were appalled when they heard recordings once they’d “come down.”
When you’re deeply depressed, all your questions are answered—unpleasantly. “Why am I having trouble at work? Why are my relationships going badly? Why is my health failing?” The answer is simple. “It’s all my own fault. I am a miserable, stupid person whom nobody loves. Not only is my life lousy, but it’s going to get worse and worse until I die. Which will be soon.”
I believe in reason. I’m a strong defender of reason (all praise to Francis Schaeffer). But human beings don’t always recognize reason (or unreason) in their own heads.
That, I think, is one of the things we need other people in our lives to help with.
I’ll go out and find some. Just as soon as I’m a little less depressed.
(Please note that the above, written under the influence of a certain level of depression, may all be complete hogwash.)
What Does It Do For You?
How much do you judge a book by its opening lines? I praised P.D. James a while back for her opening lines. It is a wonderful feeling to open a new book with a great sentence or paragraph, but how much does a poor opening sink your hopes for the rest of the book? What do you think of the following openings? Do they pique your interest or leave you flat? (I picked books of similar genre released this year or last.)
1. When the rain isn’t so much falling–be it in bucket loads or like cats and dogs–but rather slamming into the car like an avalanche of stone, you know it’s time to pull over.
When you can’t see much more than the slaphappy wipers splashing through rivers on the windshield, when you’re suddenly not sure if you’re on the road any longer, and your radio emits nothing but static, and you haven’t seen another car since the sky turned black, and your fingers are tense on the wheel in an attempt to steady the old Accord in the face of terrifying wind gusts, you know it’s so totally time to pull over. (source)
2. Starjet Commander Cody Ferguson, six, turned the gears, adjusted the knobs, and jammed the joystick into hyperdrive. Starship Galaxy went into a steep climb, super thrusters whining at top speed.
Back on earth, Daddy looked angry. Mommy cried. The doctor rolled his chair over, put his head close to theirs, and smiled the sour little smile that grown-ups smile when there is nothing in the world to smile about. (source)
3. The guy’s BO made Luke’s eyes water. He had long greasy hair, an eleven o’clock shadow, jeans as brown as they were blue, and a crumpled, stain-riddled Hawaiian shirt.
“This your first time to Agua Rancheria?” He sniffed loudly, wiping his nose.
Luke gave a nod and looked out the bus window, hoping to end the conversation.
No such luck. (source)
4.A dead man spoke to her from the shadows. “Seven o’clock,” his voice rasped, barely audible over the wind tumbling through the dry heat of late summer. “The Mint.”
Even as the wind carried it away, she began telling herself it was an illusion, a ghost speaking to her from the shadows of her own mind rather than the shadows of this pothole-laden street.
Still.
She put down the garbage can and glanced at Steve on the other side of the garbage truck. He was bending down to pick up a couple of clipped branches; if he’d heard the voice, it hadn’t stopped him. (source)
A Good Use of Internet Space
Simon & Schuster, part of the failing CBS empire (I’m sorry. That was a snide, political swipe which was entirely inappropriate in this context. I repent. Truly.) and TurnHere Internet Video have launched bookvideos.tv, another interesting little book promo site using video snippets to raise awareness of their books. Here’s one of a very popular selection, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Wells.
In which I flatter myself by comparison to a much better writer
C. S. Lewis, in the introduction to the 1961 edition of The Screwtape Letters, tells of one subscriber to the Manchester Guardian, which originally published the series, who canceled his subscription because “much of the advice given in these letters seemed to him not only erroneous but positively diabolical.”
Today I got an e-mail from someone who read my latest American Spectator Online article. In the interest of objectivity, I shall quote a portion of his opening paragraph unedited:
You are the most out-of-touch, backwards-thinking, and plain ignorant author I have read on the subject of Islam. Your blatant, and apparently deliberate, disregard for the abhorrent inequalities and lack of human rights inherent to Islam is despicable.
He goes on to castigate me for my defense of Islamic culture.
Now this certainly doesn’t prove…
a) that I’m as good an author as Lewis, or
b) that my correspondent is as dense as the Guardian subscriber.
It’s possible, for instance, that I’m just a bad parodist, and that thousands of readers came away with the very same impression, but weren’t exercised enough to write to me.
And there’s always the possibility that my reader’s letter was itself parody, and that I didn’t get it.
Why America Is Going to Pot
We don’t have annual tomato fights.