Looking Blueish

Friends have remarked from direct observation and from a blogological perspective that I seem a little down lately. This is true. There are—well, how many reasons? Let's count them—or maybe let's not. Sufficient to the day, at any rate. But I don't think it's the end of the world to feel sad occasionally. Dostoyevsky said somewhere, "A young man who is always sensible is of little worth and not to be trusted—that's my opinion!" And me, I say that a middle-aged person who never feels sad is either lobotomized or not paying attention. I mean, come on, we live in a universe where everything is mortal, from the stars on down to landscapes and kittens and you and me. Everything you love will someday flicker like a candle and go out. And if you're still upbeat and positive and seeing the glass as half full that day, then again—I think you're missing something. But I have my memories, you're saying, Upbeat One? Indeed I do. A sweet sorrow, memory of what you loved. End of discussion.

But I don't wallow in it, when I feel this way. The other day I came home, feeling blue, and looked up and saw a robin on the telephone wire above my parking spot. Very alive, it was, very much alive. I got out the camera. You see that very robin right now. It cheered me up. And the other morning the entire eastern sky was suffused with a deep coral color that glowed like the Northern Lights. Simply magnificent. And last night I played music with a friend and then drove home through the hills, and the fields and hollows were filled with a soft white fog, and above them loomed the fringed mass of the greenish-black forests, and above them higher rose dark grey banks of clouds. All soft, all misted, like standing inside a Chinese landscape and looking up. It was magnificent, and in the presence of such things I have enough sense not to mope. So don't worry about me, I'm not tying a noose to the pipes in the basement or anything. It's like the weather, this sort of thing.


One way to fight off a passing depression is to get in touch with your inner 14-year-old boy. So let's turn to the goofy side of life, and what better source of goofiness than—all together now—the Infamous W.! She was working in the library the other day when this old feller comes in and asks her if she heard about the guy who lost the key to his girlfriend's apartment and didn't get any new key. Another library staff person fled to the office for fear of losing it in front of the old feller. The Infamous stood her ground and scolded him like a schoolmarm, saying they're trying to keep the library G-rated, although from the stories I hear they're not trying hard enough. Library people have urges too, it seems. My own pronouncement on this joke: "Pathologically lame." Why do the old fellers do this? To inform women 20 years younger that they still have reproduction on their minds? OK, I get it, but why the stupid jokes? Couldn't you just make up a button or something? I was never a dirty-joke teller myself. I did notice in my younger years that when young, attractive guys told women mildly dirty jokes, the women would giggle and laugh and eventually go to bed with them, even the sensitive, intelligent women I thought I had a shot with myself. If there's a lesson in this, I've learned it thirty years too late. But probably the lesson is to be young and attractive. Don't quote me, though—I was never much of an expert in this.

Another thing I'l never understand: having your pants hang down as a fashion statement. Wait: I do understand. It's like the Chinese thing of growing your fingernails out to unimaginable curling lengths to tell the world you jolly well don't have to work. But in this case it means you're so ferocious that you don't have to run, like, ever. Or something. How would I know? There's plenty to think and wonder about in this world, that's all I can say.