Alright, let’s do this. Depression. Apathy. Party Pooping. Here there be dragons.
I had the habit for many years of leaving half eaten fruit to decay, sometimes in glass jars or in the fridge but often just strewn about. It sounds demented I’m sure, and I suppose it probably was. Last year I saw that movie Taxi Driver and I think I began to understand myself a little better. I mean, listen to this from three years ago:
17.02.09 – abridged
“I have a habit of keeping a decaying thing about my desk. It started with orange peels years ago … A few yellowing grapes, maybe, or a carrot pockmarked with nibbles. A cleanly divided orange bell pepper makes for a nice subject … Perhaps it’s like the opposite of gardening. Call it a complementary denouement to gardening … I am spying on these wasted morsels. I am watching them fade away. To me, this partially eaten apple feels true … Patience truly is the most vicious of the virtues.”
Travis, I think his name was Travis, didn’t do reverse gardening but he had that unhealthy diet. Then in that movie First Reformed the guy lets himself go, lets his body be taken over. And in The Joker you see that thin, twisted body, all skeletal and ghoulish. These are all manifestations of the same disease. Of course, I don’t have it near as bad as those guys. They’ve gone pro. I still take solace in entertainment, philosophy, hobbies. Even when I slept on the street I was always looking up at the sky, contemplating something.
Yet without that where would I be? Well, that’s not what I mean to ask. I wonder about other people I suppose. Through these walls there are other rooms. In other cities, in other decades, so many rooms. And in some of those rooms, are there people like me?
There’s method acting, and then there’s method writing, right? Somewhere along the line I convinced myself that the people I wanted to understand the most were the hopeless ones. The lonely ones, the depressed, the ones who’d gone down a hole in themselves. I had these ambitions to worm my way into that side of things, and dissect it, mash it up, dry it out, crush it down into a powder and create some kind of magical balm that could heal a soul or two. Well, you have to justify your actions somehow. I mean, I don’t know. I think I really did mean it at the time. I really meant to live that pain and then somehow strain it through my brain like a juicing. But of course, at some point I obviously forgot. I mean, even if I had remembered, it’s a terrible plan.
Some people listen to sad music when they’re sad. But that kind of melancholy is like a sweet blueberry compared to the black banana of depression. There are more depressed people today than ever before. People with no will to live, nothing to look forward to, no faith in anything larger, no confidence in themselves, no plans to put off. Just one eternity of a moment after another.
The weird thing about our hard wiring is that we can be so unhappy, so empty, and yet still insist on living. We are just dragged along. Just like dragging a four year old through the market. There’s no bawling about it at that point, just complete dead fish non-participation boycotting of existence.
These people are nowhere. And you can go different places from nowhere. Some people pop back into reality, or have pills that do it for them. There are different routes. I don’t think any of them are very superior to any of the others. Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. At this point I’m just forcing myself to add one word after another. I mean, there are times when I’m feeling really gray that I read something and I get some color out of it. Even if the color that I get is more gray on top of the gray I already had, it still helps. I mean, to me, staying in nowhere is okay. It’s acceptable.
But is that acceptance an acceptable idea to spread around? When you hear other people talk about nowhere they’re usually saying that nowhere is bad. You have to get out of nowhere. Here’s how I got out of nowhere. You could try this way, that might work. Let’s just go somewhere, doesn’t matter where. Anywhere but nowhere. Get out, get out at all costs! So my impression is that no, it isn’t really considered acceptable.
They say some people have their wires crossed. It’s hard. It’s just hard to know which people are the truly crossed ones. I mean, what if I think there’s something truly, terribly wrong, something fundamentally off about reality, that existence is just a broken thing. Am I the crazy one? Maybe I am. I can’t know. It can’t be possible that I’m right and the universe is wrong? If there are a billion other people in the room and they all agree that we should try to make this work, then should I disregard whatever it is I’m thinking? Yeah, maybe. Probably. I mean what if I do have crossed wires. What if I am crossed wires. I can’t uncross if I’m the cross because then the uncross is the not me because I’m the crossed one. What am I, supposed to just change into whatever works? That’s pure practicality. I give that a big thumbs down. I yech and I yuck and I yickerydoo. I Bartleby not to.
Here’s what I’d like to see. If I’m this person then here’s what I want. I want to know that it isn’t just me. Right? So knowing that’s what I want, then it seems reasonable to write something like this. Because I used to be someone who could never have admitted, to myself let alone publicly, this kind of thing. Be the person you would’ve needed, right?
But on the other hand, what if by doing that I hold someone back. What if someone is about to leave that room and I’m the one saying hey, hold up, you dropped this giant ball and chain that you were so busy unshackling yourself from! Whew, good thing I caught you. Wow, that fits on there snug like it was made for you. Anyway, I gotta run, so.
See, with other people there’s just too much at stake. Let’s just stick to fruit.
saltednotion 