Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Summer Depression

A wave of summer depression... a thing very different than the late winter variety (It would never occur to me in winter to call it a 'wave') ...which brings to mind again the thought that it isn't something in me, but as much around & over & under -- surroundings taken in & leaking out of this sealed skin-bag I call "my" body... a diffusion of the configuration of Self -- a kind of entropy where concentrations of Selfness & Worldness interact like blue and yellow dye separated in a jar will merge into a uniform green solution, as though a drop in the level of energy (the physical reality of depression) were no longer sufficient to maintain the distinction; if then what I'm registering is a dissolution of self in the world, it makes as much sense to say, the 'world' is depressed, as to say that I am.

Interesting that we generally don't think of physical pain--however unpleasent--as itself a malady (though I realize there are conditions where it would seem to be just that) -- but consequence of something else, a symptom, a signal that it is important to respond to and understand. Depression is like a great weight, being wrapped in lead--it's the profound malaise that make one 'disfunctional' in a state of deep depression... very like the way pain makes us unable to pay attention to anything else. But if we search only 'within' for generative seeds of depression we manage only to sink further into the malaise--when what we need is to be able to return to the world. attending, then, to that of the world we have taken in would be a more reasonable way to find our way out.

‎... even though, finding our way out into a productive interaction with a sick world may not make us happier, and may waken a far deeper saddness--but one that doesn't paralyze.

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