It's nothing more or less than the human condition

In the age of Big Pharma, we have, of course come to medicalize such thoughts — not to mention just about every other whim and pang. When I once confided with a physician friend that one of my children seemed to overheat with anxiety around tests, he smiled kindly and literally assured, “No need to worry about that, we have a cure for anxiety today.” On current reckoning, anxiety is a symptom, a problem, but Kierkegaard insists, “Only a prosaic stupidity maintains that this (anxiety) is a disorganization.” And again, if a “speaker maintains that the great thing about him is that he has never been in anxiety, I will gladly provide him with my explanation: that is because he is very spiritless. ”

Kierkegaard understood that anxiety can ignite all kinds of transgressions and maladaptive behaviors — drinking, carousing, obsessions with work, you name it. We will do most anything to steady ourselves from the dizzying feeling that can take almost anything as its object. However, Kierkegaard also believed that, “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.”

In his “Works of Love,” Kierkegaard remarks that all talk about the spirit has to be metaphorical. Sometimes anxiety is cast as a teacher, and at others, a form of surgery. The prescription in “The Concept of Anxiety” and other texts is that if we can, as the Buddhists say, “stay with the feeling” of anxiety, it will spirit away our finite concerns and educate us as to who we really are, “Then the assaults of anxiety, even though they be terrifying, will not be such that he flees from them.” According to Kierkegaard’s analysis, anxiety like nothing else brings home the lesson that I cannot look to others, to the crowd, when I want to measure my progress in becoming a full human being.

--from Mockingbird.

Let's talk about symptoms

There is the "anhedonia" phase.
Then there is the "I just want to sleep" phase.

Then there is the strange "I don't give a sh*t" phase.

Meanwhile, the disorder in my office and at home grows & grows.

Lapis Lazuli

I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,'
Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instmment.

Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay. 

--Wm. Butler Yeats

I owe everyone an apology

...The Black Dog is making me a bit self-absorbed these days.  One of its greatest tricks is to make me want to isolate myself, which makes me feel isolated & lonely & self-pitying, which is a self-reinforcing cycle even while I try to fight it.  Trying to make it a day at a time right now.

How fragile a thing . . .

 . . . is trust.

Monday Update, Post-Florida Edition

In short, I could use about another week of break.  This past week was grueling.  I have learned that traveling like I did this past week really takes a toll on my energy and my mind.  Sarasota is a wonderfully nice city--but also awfully expensive to visit.

Seriously, I feel like I need to find a reset button.  It's hard not to get overwhelmed by the simplest things these days.

I have learned some things recently that are hard to swallow.  Best to choke them down, though.

I guess people get used to it

Thoughts upon completing this trip to The Sunshine State, mostly involving the interminable airport parts:

1. The TSA shoe tango is utterly absurd.
2. Car rental may be the most baroque process ever devised by man. Trying to return the damn keys was an ordeal...and apparently the agent got frustrated with me because I parked the car in a spot designated for the company from which I was renting...which was apparently the wrong place to park it.
3. Traveling is brutally expensive. Why? Because when waiting for flights at the terminal, we will pay whatever they want to charge us for our coffee/cocktails/beer/soda/water.
4. How come the Sarasota airport has a B terminal but not an A terminal?
5. Props to this airport for the free wi-fi. Or for hiding the charge in the ticket prices, etc.
6. Why do people dress this way?? Eeek!
7. I think I become almost invisible when I travel by myself. You could probably put your hand right through me right this very second.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Little Red

Tomorrow is his 4th birthday, and I'll be heading to Florida. 
I would rather spend the day with him.