Shifting tides

That title sounds like I’ve been to the beach. On the contrary, I’d love to go there but haven’t in a huge long time. I’m thinking today about depression, and how it can come and go, at least in my life. Last week I was feeling really vacant, and I felt powerless to do anything about it. I could look at and strongly rue the mess of my house, but felt unable to lift a finger to put anything away. Driving down the road, I could ooze into tears without any definable reason. Yet I could see it as though from a distance and tell myself that I was most certainly depressed. Even though I am somewhat opposed to, actually fearful of – taking drugs, I began to wonder about anti-depressants.

Then came a shift. I forced myself to make a decision about my job, one that I’d been perplexed and obsessed about for some time. After an all day meeting out of town, I went and sat in my office and made a decision. Then I notified all of the necessary people, took a deep breath and went home. Almost immediately I felt an easing of the tightness that had held me in check. Two days later, I discovered that my bank balance was higher than I expected because of a check I’d forgotten I would be receiving, and finally I felt the shift.

So am I saying the answer to depression is money? Not really. It’s just that money is often a big stessor for me so having some releases that part of the tightness that holds me. Difficult decisions or perhaps more realistically, accepting difficult things is something else that holds me, while I wrestle with it in my mind, so arriving at a calm place with regard to that releases me again, or further.

I am speaking of depression in a simplistic way, I know, and anyone who has experienced it over a long period of time would surely scoff at my treatment of it here. But I had such a clear view of it all the other day as I sat in my car with tears seeping out, and how it relates to so many behaviors that drag and hold people down – things like overeating, drinking, drug using, working out, video game playing, internet surfing, reading, excesses of anything. Oh God! Blogging? Maybe so.

Resituation

I’m home from a weeklong trip to New York and Washington D.C. It was a good week. I got to spend time with people I like very much, doing work and learning new things and just playing a little. In New York, the first day I was there, I decided I wanted to actually go into Macy’s on 34th street. I tried in N ovember, but the crowds were overwhelming, so I left. So, on the first morning in Manhattan, I set out for a long walk. I put on my raincoat and scarf and my iPod and headed down Fifth Avenue. I set the iPod for “Shuffle songs,” which has such a nice effect. It plays whatever I need to hear in the moment. A little Arjona, Martina, Patsy Cline, Paul Simon, some Abraham and Rhonda Byrne (the Secret), followed by the Beatles. Like a cosmic playlist. I just felt like I was in a little cocoon of my own making, present but not part of it all.

On about 42nd Street, I witnessed a fight between a couple out on the street – a little shoving which was quickly ended, then lots of screaming. She accused him of being a Fucking Guinea, and he just yelled “Fuck You!” They were probably back home together by evening. (What’s a Guinea, anyway?) He was white and she wasn’t. Don’t know what she was, but his whiteness seemed pivotal to her. When I came upon it, on the shoving, I wondered if this was one of those situations where some stranger (me) has to tell someone to quit shoving someone around. But that part ended and they left in separate directions. New York could easily bring out strong emotions, I can imagine. The intensity of such a densely populated place has a power unlike what I’m accustomed to here in Chico where one can still park right in front of the airport.

Now that I’m home, I have to resituate myself within my life. When I am away from home, I remember it different from how it actually is. In my memory it is how I’d like it to be, not necessarily how I left it. That has drawbacks. It is discouraging to come home to all that needs to be done to make home match the image I carry of it. The idea of resituation is one that compels me to do something different, something to create the safe haven I carry in my mind. It is also about remembering where I fit in my life. My work, my friends, my goals and dreams. It seems that being away, living in the moment – walking on Fifth Avenue with my Cosmic Playlist – leaves all the uncertainties on a shelf back at home. Now I’m home and must pick it all up again. I’d like to do so with some measure of grace.

Gardens in Bomb Casings

The picture in my blog header right now is of a bomb casing which is being used as an herb garden. I took the photo in Laos in 2003. It is interesting to me on a couple of levels. First, the people that put it there were my countrymen. They dropped millions of tons of ordnance on this tiny country, and we weren’t even at war with them. Just had too much too carry, in some cases and wanted to try new things in others. It’s embarrassing, still, forty some years later. Does “embarrassing” trivialize it? I don’t know. Probably. Shameful is a better word, I think.

But the other part of this commentary is my admiration for the recipients of the bombs. They are extremely resourceful people, due in large part, I imagine, to their extreme poverty. I was entranced by the things they make of bamboo, the complex textiles they weave on looms built under little bamboo houses built on stilts. They do far more with far less than I can even imagine having. And use bomb casings for gardens. Of course.