Lugnasa Hiroshima Moon
I have a theory, at least part of a theory, about melancholy. As it applies to me. It has two parts at least. The first is that there is a dark river, my own Styx or Cocytus, that flows through my soul. It’s headwaters are back in the distant, psychic past, perhaps my mother’s early death, perhaps even my childhood bout with polio. Both shocks to the inner cathedral, perhaps cracking its dome? This river, often underground, below consciousness, surfaces occasionally and interrupts daily life, flooding it with the blackness of those times.
The second may seem odd. A movement toward creativity. That is, when I decide–conscious choice–to get to work at my writing, with the intention of staying at it for a long period of time,like writing a novel, there is a turn inward and downward, a sort of deflection of energy from the outer world into the place–you know it if you’ve been there–where the ideas live.
Somewhere in here, too, is the question of succeed or fail, achieve or fail; a question I addressed a while back in the post, there is only make. This tension may get reinforcement from the second part of the theory. That is, as I move into writing, my succeed or fail flag gets raised and along with it a flag that reads danger ahead. Be cautious!
As I said, too, a while back, I’m at a point where the reasons are less important than the reality. A reality that I know includes a gradual climb back up, up to the place where I know there is only make. The place where that dark river disappears again underground and where the creative work is underway. A place I look forward to tonight.