Then it occurs to me, President Kennedy wanted for us to admit our pain, the pain of being human in this small world that we share. Something he never did in public, the severe physical pain he had.

For the last twenty five years or so I have woken up in one form or another of depression. It varies somewhat. It's not like that of the woman in our town who would walk along College Street in an almost zombie-like medicated state (purportedly she had witnessed something horrible), it's not like I don't function, but it's there on a daily basis. There have been ups and downs as far as days one wants to get up out of bed, days one finds not much reason, maybe just needs rest, lots of rest. I'm probably not that different from a lot of people in that regard; maybe it's just that most people grow up and find some profession to go to during the day, which more or less takes care of things. The fault is mine for the job of working nights, leaving the hours before to stew. (Is writing, just on your own, a job of any sort, one that offers great promise or security?)

I've tried homeopathic stuff, holy basil, GABA, supplements like B vitamins, amino acid tyrosine, L-arginine, 5-HTP. (Along with a fair amount of natural anti-inflammatory herbals like astragalus and Chinese skullcap.) Who knows, sometimes I feel they help, kind of pull away the curtains so that daylight can flow in and out up there, a sense of well-being. Yes, sometimes I could almost swear they help. To find some glimmer of happy childhood, before the morose Irishman, before things like regrets. Of course, this is why we must exercise, yoga, an hour of something aerobic, just to get yourself back in a decent mood. Maybe it's just that for the great percentage of our evolution we walked constantly, always doing something physical, carrying in our hands a reassuring bow and arrow or a spear, or doing something with an axe. And perhaps, maybe most therapeutic of all, words, the writing down of things, the steady 'showing up' to pick up the worded thoughts of a previous day, dust them off, shine them, and then continue with the train of thought.

So you get up out of bed. Leave the curtains open at night, just to get some light to help you get going. Things like dirty dishes in a sink are very heavy. Hard even to make the tea, but you can, and finally do, and stuff like this, small accomplishments, help you not have a poisoned brain toward the day. We're social animals. It helps to get out of the apartment. This is why there are coffee shops, to let one's own brain waves mingle in the electric flows of people who have already started their day, already working on something. But sometimes I find them too noisy, distracting, too much of an effort, and that the best approach to them is that of a birds, like the sparrows one finds on the terrace outside, to find a little comfortable perch in the sun.

When you are depressed you can fall to that foolish thing called living in the past. There are the ninja armies of should'a, would'a, could'a, leaping out at you unannounced, a particular memory, options not taken, gracious efforts not made in your stung shyness that was already prone to 'the artistic high-strung temperament' already even back then, as if you didn't have your eyes open to the beauty of life before you. Things of your youth you feel bad about in middle age. You'd like to, as they say, seize the day, but of course, you can't.

Our college wants us to write a little blurb about what we've been up to as we go to our 25th reunion. Maybe that too, besides praying to President Kennedy, prompts these thoughts. What have I done... Well, basically I've been a barman. I've worked in two establishments, neighborhood places, but places well-known, well-respected enough to get flow from a good portion of the town. I get up, get ready, and then I go in, get the bar ready, get set-up, the door opens, and then I'm solicitous for the next hours, etc. I've conversed with many people, with many on a regular basis. I've served some function in the town, and been there steadily, on Wisconsin Avenue, waiting on whoever walks in the door (with some exceptions) for a good amount of time. Not showy enough to be a legend, but maybe a guy who's generous as long as he can stand it.

Something to mention, but not a huge amount to crow about. I'll mention too that I worked on one project steadily, thus the novel, self-published. I try not to talk too much about it at work, the 'what else do you do besides tend bar (because obviously you are intelligent),' oh, I wrote a novel, it's kind of like The Catcher in the Rye... boy meets girl, boy fucks it up, repeatedly, blah blah, what the hell is it about anyway, I don't know, I just wrote the damn thing, I guess it's like this modern take on Hamlet, as if we were to drop into a college setting, but not the court intrigue plot level, no nothing like that, basically about as readable and publishable as Joyce, later Joyce... Gloomy crap no one needs to read, and look here I am staring at my naval again talking about it and don't we have anything better to talk about and hey how's your wine working with whatever . Whatever.

But I say all this because we all our brave, what we do, how we live and face life, knowing an inkling of what ultimately will happen to us. I say this knowing that we all have regrets. And ultimately we all must find some faith in the notion that the world is, as it were, our soul mate, that therefore we love the world, that we trust the world implicitly, even knowing that in doing so we open ourselves up to pain. Maybe that is a reason, yet another one, why we forgive, forgive another as one who just like us has walked out onto the ice in hopes of finding.

I have no doubts in my mind that Lincoln suffered from the gloom, fought to live through it, to find a way 'out' as it were, to find a satisfying solution, a connection, to a great puzzle to put his foot upon, to find a meaning to 'dedicate' his own life to. Perhaps he was lucky to find such a role, though all the issues he would then face each presented itself with the problem of depression in various states of scale, and to not just sit there feeling helpless, lost.

One day, I vaguely remember, we saw the woman walking along College Street, and she looked surprisingly normal, as if something had blown away, and she was taking one step at a time and taking care of things. She had her life back, if not all those lost years.




Postscript, the usual after-thoughts that pile in: There is a part of the mind, the thinking artistic mind that, perhaps because of its highness, leaves one gentle to the point of passivity. The artist can't help the mode, passive to the truth, and this habit tends to place him at odds, to some extent, with any society she/he falls into, which does not encourage passivity because all must have rules to follow, to take a place in the pecking order. The vehicle by which he/she takes in that which shall be reformed and recreated as art seems to cause him to fight less than he should for the life he wants and the things even his heart cries out for. Sad on both ends, witnessing the sufferings of others, like the busboy with family and children far away, not seen in years, unable to help, realizing life must therefore be a self-minded battle, sad for not being as pro-active as he should be for his own.