Astronomically speaking, I'm a few days late on the Sol Invictus front; but we've had a stretch of typically grey mid-western mid-winter of late, and the sun has not been particularly generous with its presence. And, now that Christmas is behind me I can focus on the thing that really matters: the days WILL be getting longer now, even if the worst of winter is still ahead of us.
As this page points out, many cultures have noted or celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Of course it is not the brevity of that day that is celebrated; it is the fact that the solstice is followed by steadily lengthening days and, eventually by warmer weather. In our agricultural past this was a matter, quite literally, of life and death. The months of autumn bring with them the certain, though often lovely, death of plant life across the land. But after the leaves have fallen and the stark skeletons of trees cast long shadows across the cold, lifeless soil, it can seem that death's victory is complete and final. To our ancestors, who were much more aware than we are that our lives depend on the productivity of the soils, this long season of death often brought an existential crisis, defined by the simplest of questions: have we stored enough food to last until summer? But it takes no great imagination to see how the literal existential crisis of the food supply could be mirrored by a philosophical/spiritual crisis; the fact that this spiritual counterpart is the product of what we today call an affective condition, one sparked perhaps by something as mundane as insufficient sunlight, does little to diminish the profundity of the spiritual condition. Whether it be the poets who may (or may not!) have turned ancient pagan vegetation rituals into Grail legends (think of the Arthurian Wasteland, a kingdom lying barren in the clutches of death, awaiting the hero who will bring renewal) or the monks fighting off mid-winter acedia, the stark landscape of winter's death has probably been seen as a metaphor ever since humans first wandered into temperate zones and, rather stupidly, failed to turn back southward!
The trouble with all of this is that from late December until the arrival of true relief—warmer weather, fresh produce, weather that does not kill—it is a very long time. And here the pathetic fallacy kicks in:
Last week I finally found the initiative to go into our community mental health center. That Wednesday was dark and cold, and the night before I had found little sleep, and so I spent the day in the sort of despair I have not felt since last winter. It was time, I decided, the accept the fact that the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change was not working for me, that it may be the "cure" for depression, as Dr. Ilardi's book claims, but that it is not the cure for dysthymia. So I decided it was time to finally try the psycho-pharmacopoeia. I spent most of my visit to the center on the verge of tears, feeling as broken as I've ever felt. Just being there, just filling out the paperwork, seemed to be an admission of affective incompetence, an admission that I had no other hopes. My initial consultation was with a psychologist, who went through the motions she had to go through in order to tell me what I already knew. Finally she said she would put me into the hopper for an appointment with someone who might actually do something for me; like write a prescription. She said they would call about an appointment with the psychiatrist. She said it might be 8 weeks.
8 weeks.
Such is the state of mental health care in the USA for those without insurance. And I am probably fortunate to have access to a community health program that is as good as this one seems to be. Still, one wonders why we insist on nurturing a culture that is often so indifferent or even cruel to those who need help.
More on recent events soon. For now, here is a passage from James Joyce's "The Dead." Dreary winter days always remind me of this story, of the final paragraph, and of the gorgeous bleak final camera pan in John Huston's movie of the story. Here is the lovely final paragraph. Read it out loud.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment