Sunday, November 19, 2006

Hello, darkness, my old friend

Depression is back this evening, having dropped in around 1 p.m.

I've been reading a book by Zen master Charlotte Joko Beck, which is frankly not helping. I may put it aside until I'm in a better frame of mind.

(Although Beck herself might tell me to sit with my suffering and be one with it. And Caterine Vauban would encourage me to frankly wallow in it.)

I asked myself what it would take this evening to make me happy, and realized nothing would. The most I could say is that there are some things that would at least distract for a while from my unhappiness... and realized that pretty much all my life, the thing I've been seeking that I called 'happiness' was actually just some undefined something to distract me from unhappiness.

I went to the Red Cup at about 4:30 for awhile, fully aware that I was going just to distract myself. The place was almost empty. Spaghetti with marinara was the special, which is a pretty darned good distraction. I think their marinara is as good as any in town.

Now I'm back home, with cats and the Internet to distract me.

I'm more comfortable, as always, when I'm unhappy than I am when I'm happy.

And it's been awhile since I've had any of those serene, blissful 'moments' when everything seems fine just as it is. More often, things seem like shit, and yet just as they're supposed to be.


(blogger's note: In case you didn't know, Caterine Vaubon is the nihilist existentialist author from the movie I Heart Huckabee's, portrayed by Isabelle Huppert. She is not a real person. Kudos to Fox Searchlight pictures for keeping her faux website alive all these years.)

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