dec 18 / the obvious analogy
it's the SADdest month of the year (I made that up but it seems right)
The obvious analogy is with music, I thought as I rode the subway uptown. Those words from Lyn Hejinian came back to me often, jingling in and of themselves. I was headed to a literary talk given by a former professor centered on the spirit of sound. A brilliant poet, for an entire semester she waxed to us about the life of an artist and teased us with excerpts from Chelsea Girls. I wrote down everything she said, in spite of it being highly specific and anecdotal. At the reading I attempted to catch her eye but found no recognition in return. That didn’t surprise me. I was quiet and mousy and yet to be changed when we knew each other. I regressed to that version of myself on this damp Thursday night.
It’s been a wet week. I like cold weather and rain; I think a little bit of pain is romantic but I didn’t ask to feel this storm all the time! In October the darkness creeps in, in November it grows and in December it overpowers. “I’m so glum,” I told my new therapist, describing how I had walked past a playground full of kids and let a temporary but heavy depression descend at my present and their future. “Who isn’t?” She replied, and laughed at my melodrama. “It’s the SADdest month of the year.” A reminder of the psychological normalcy of my life.
The night before this I sang karaoke with friends, the cacophony of our voices making us all giggle. Someone chose “Ribs” by Lorde and we screamed the verses in call and response - “I want it back, I want it back - this minds we had, the minds we had.” Words I recalled while glancing at the children on the playground in the mist of midday. But I remembered then that the song continued. “You’re the only friend I need, you’re the only friend I need - sharing beds like little kids, sharing beds like little kids.” The sentiment rang true, my heart enlarged by the friends who enabled me to experience such simple joys. A reminder of the fulness of my life.
I’m not sleeping so great; I never really have. At age fifteen, when my pattern of deprivation became more emphatic, I developed a tired eye twitch which came and went, depending on the current of life. It returned this week as a talisman of the break which I soon must take. In the hour before I fall into the arms of rest, and the hour in which my brain blinks back open, noises of the world outside my window mix and contort in my ear. The guttural honk of a truck rings out like the swollen note of a symphony, an alarm sparkles. A reminder of the subtle beauties of my life.
The obvious analogy is with music. The sounds that rise up from the respiratory around me, the sounds that are lacking in my life when a certain person is not there. When I save my words for this person my voice grows raspy, chest tight with all which I cannot release. Is there a consolation that comes with the song of tears? A freedom in the music most inherent to us all? For now I take solace in gentle tones, pneumatic texts that remind of the breath in my life. And soon, my new therapist says, the days will get longer, with more opportunity for purloining Vitamin D. Soon we will all feel a bit less SAD.
