[EDIT: Several people were curious why I would be so depressed this weekend, so I will direct you back to the final paragraphs of "He Knows the Hour and the Day" where I discuss my daughter moving away with her mother. On Friday evening, I dropped my daughter off, gave her a hug and a kiss, and then cried with the kind of grief I can't put into words once I was out of sight. The following morning, before the sun came up, my daughter flew out of my day-to-day life for the foreseeable future.]
Twice in the last seventy-two hours I’ve started writing up a new post, only to eventually discard and DELETE them because they were so friggin’ depressing that unleashing them on the internet-at-large would very likely cause a depression singularity, collapsing all happiness in the universe in on itself, thus creating an actual swirling black-hole-OF-SUCK right here in the heart of the Pacific Northwest.
As I don’t want to be remembered as the man who stole the smiles from all the children in the world and made all the chocolate taste like charcoal…I’ll do my best to keep this a bit less doom-and-gloomy.
It’s funny, when I know something really suck-worthy is coming up, I never actually plan for the time period when things are actually sucking. Somehow I think I expected to just get up on Saturday morning, throw open the curtains, smile at my neighbors, realize that I was naked, and spend the morning laughing about the whole thing with the nice policemen that showed up to explain “decency laws” in the Municipality of Keizer…
I did NOT wake up on Saturday with a smile. In fact, I gave serious thought to just not waking up on Saturday at all. Fuck Saturday. Hell, fuck any day that ends in “y” or is recognized as a state or national holiday (because I don’t want to give Thanksgiving or Christmas a free ride here). Father Time can go shove sharp objects in his favorite orifice and call it macaroni for all I care.
I know depression. I can smell it on my skin and in my clothes. I can taste it in my mouth. I can hear it’s trademark absence of sound everywhere and nowhere. I know this dragon. I know him well.
At first I was almost incapable of acknowledging him. I almost just turned my back and went back to sleep. “Let him have me” I said, “I. DO. NOT. CARE.”
“Really?” he asked. “Not even a little?”
“NO” I replied, squeezing my eyes shut.
“That’s too bad. You’ve always been too tough to really devour easily and you’re a bit too bitter for my tastes anyway…but a job’s a job and a meal’s a meal I suppose.” And with that the gloomy thing wrapped it’s cold coils around my throat.
I didn’t really fight it. I just slowly, gaspingly, stumblingly lurched from menial task to menial task as the weekend wore on. Slowly suffocating under the thing’s horrible weight.
Until today. Today, I went to work. And at lunch time, I decided to get lunch. This is noteworthy because I NEVER get lunch. Unless there’s a team activity or a customer engagement, I never eat lunch.
I drove down to Bridgeport Village, which is a sort of open air shopping center where people with six-figure salaries (and more often the spouses of people with six-figure salaries) go shopping for the books, baobabs, over-priced designer label clothes, even MORE overpriced one-of-a-kind designs, tech toys (an Oregon Scientific AND an Apple store, natch…), and everything else that the upper-upper-middle and lower-upper classes waste spend bestow their ridiculous amounts of discretionary income on.
As I qualify for the Bridgeport Village’s target audience, I guess it’s just natural that I gravitate to a place where the open air piazza and the surrounding architecture look like the Disney interpretation of an Italian village populated entirely by people who drive Range Rovers, Hummers, Mercedes Benz’s, Porsches, and more pristine late-model Harley Davidson Fatboys than you can possibly believe.
Hollywood would never include a place like this in a movie about semi-rich people. They’d assume everyone would think it was just too fucking pretentious to exist.
I love it. I don’t know why, but I love it.
It has shops I just can’t find anywhere else within driving distance. For example, there’s a paper store that carries the largest selection of fountain pens ON EARTH. Ok, probably not ON EARTH…but for at least 300 miles in any direction from here. AND THEY LET YOU TRY THEM OUT!!!!!
COME ON PEOPLE! You know you want to use a $400 fountain pen on $12 a sheet paper with ink that’s sold BY THE GRAM. OMG…squeeeeee…ahem…anyway…
So, I start my adventure with a trip to Zao Noodles, the best noodle bar in Oregon. Period. And I ordered my favorite, Phad Thai with Shrimp and Deep Fried Tofu.
While my order was being prepared I wandered over to Borders and found two things that simply HAD to be purchased. First was “The Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie and second was “The Court of the Air” by Stephen Hunt.
People, if you title a book “The Enchantress of Florence” I’m gonna buy it. If it’s by Salman Rushdie and it won the Booker Prize, I’m gonna pay full price in hardback.
If you write a book in the style of Dickens but use steampunk and gloom-fantasy tropes…I’m gonna buy that too. If it’s from TOR and I know who the editor was, I’ll pay full price in hardback for that too.
Eight minutes (six of them in line) and fifty bucks later…I’m now really excited to read something. Excited is good.
After fetching my lunch, I decide to grab something to wash it down with and some dessert at Tutto Bene. They had my Orgina beverage and “Chocolate Birthday Cake” flavored gelato. OMFG. Chocolate. Cake. Gelato….Oh HELL yeah.
So now, I’m sitting at my desk, stuffed full of Phad Thai, consuming frothy ice cream flavored like cake batter with the smallest spoon EVER and reading the first few pages of the first good book Salman Rushdie ever wrote (oops…did I say that out loud???).
“Turn the page,” the dragon says to me, “I want to know what she says next!”
“Fine, but I need you to lighten your grip a little, you’re making it hard to swallow.”
“Deal.” he says as he readjusts on my shoulders. “You were always too bitter to taste any good anyway. So, does that really taste like Birthday Cake?”
—
As a little aside, to those of you who sent emails over the weekend out of concern that I jumped off a bridge or just needed a shoulder…your emails were sometimes the difference between my giving a shit and my just not giving a shit anymore. Ever.
You will never know how much that meant to me. I love you guys.
Lara | 14-Jul-08 at 10:12 pm | Permalink
i’m really glad you got yourself out of bed and engaged with the world again. it’s better for having you in it.
You should know that you were (and remain) one of my inspirations to get up. If you can face down the things that depress you, and overcome the things that confront you, then by gosh, I’m going to take that to heart and get up out of bed and keep going.
The visitor to your blog that kept reading the “Depression Series” over the weekend…that visitor was me. Thanks for leading the way and giving the rest of us something to look back at and lean on when we really need it.
sophia | 15-Jul-08 at 4:32 am | Permalink
A bit like my Saturdays and Sundays recently. Thank God for my husband, who told me: ‘Get your sorry ass out of bed, and lets go and play that badminton. Now, woman!’ Amazingly, it worked. And we had a really great Sunday, for a change :)
I had NO chance of performing athletic activities this weekend. Just digging the treadmill out of storage and setting it up was more work than I wanted to perform. Playing a competitive sport would have been WAY beyond me.
Good on your Hubby for pushing you forward. Thankfully I had some friends that did as much of the same for me as they could…
bluesuit12 | 15-Jul-08 at 7:20 am | Permalink
Glad you got up and re-entered the world! Chocolate cake gelato?? Sounds heavenly.
IT. WAS. AWESOME. That’s all I can say about that.
Taoist Biker | 15-Jul-08 at 7:40 am | Permalink
I also had an outrageously good culinary day yesterday, ending with the two largest steaks I’ve ever grilled in my entire life.
MMMMMMM…steaks sound SO good right now…
As for the conspicuous consumption, I once was driving down the interstate when I saw, headed in the opposite direction, a Hummer H2 pulling a near-mint late-model Harley on a trailer. I turned to my wife and said “Wow. He must have a TINY dick.”
A guy who worked for the company next door to my last company bought a “pickup” that was built by Peterbuilt. It looked like a tractor-trailer cab, and it was a giant bright-red thumb sticking out in the parking lot. I looked at it and said to one of the guys who worked for me (and who’s sense of humor I trusted) “If guys who drive Hummers are compensating for a small penis, that guy must have an innie.”
essaytch | 15-Jul-08 at 8:31 am | Permalink
My favorite part about Bridgeport Village? The model cars they have strategically placed all over the place….Lexus, Infinity, Mercedes. It’s so perfect! Then you can walk out of the Apple Store (Sur La Table bag in hand), see the model Mercedes and think “Oh that reminds me! I’ve been meaning to trade in my M3 for something newer.” Priceless…
Sadly, when I walked out of the Apple store, I did NOT have a Sur La Table bag in hand. BUT, I wish I would have. I also didn’t have an Apple store bag in hand, as they were out of 16GB iPhones in white (or black).
Pammy Girl | 15-Jul-08 at 9:13 am | Permalink
You couldn’t possibly make chocolate taste like charcoal. That’s the job of chocolate makers in Mexico… worst. stuff. ever. Gelato, on the other hand, it quite possibly heaven on earth. I ate it several times a day when I was in Italy.
I agree on both counts.
P.S. I was indeed wondering where you’d hidden yourself. From time to time I fall into a world of depression and I know it’s incredibly hard to pull yourself out. I’m glad you did.
Yeah. I almost had to start reading Cosmo with muppet voices in Borders. And yes, I did think of you.
Scomerican Girl | 15-Jul-08 at 1:12 pm | Permalink
I love Bridgeport too! I tried not to, I was all aloof and disapproving, with its open air shopping in a city that rains ALL THE TIME. But the last time I was home, I just gave up and embraced all the consumerist awesomeness. Next time you’re there, you’ll have to try the white birthday cake gelato. So amazingly good.
I KNOW I’m not supposed to like Bridgeport. It’s so egregious in it’s excessive consumerism that I feel bad somehow shopping there. But I figure Borders is Borders and I love the food…so screw it. Where else can I find this much cool stuff in one place? …what’s that? The Pearl District? …oh…yeah…
AND BY THE WAY…how is it that you were within a few measly miles of my desk and I DIDN’T get the chance to meet you for white birthday cake gelato? Next time EMAIL ME. I’ll buy.
Glad you’re feeling better and you’ve returned to the fold. Wouldn’t be the same without you!
Thanks!
Scomerican Girl | 16-Jul-08 at 4:48 am | Permalink
Free gelato? How can I say no to that?! I won’t be home again for another six months but I’ll let you know! Though at that point it won’t be so much al fresco gelato as duck and cover from the rain gelato, but it’ll still taste fantastic. :)
Six months from now we’ll have to eat it inside the Cafe, that’s probably true. And it will be mid January, so we both know that the weather will be so heinous that we may well need an Ark to get there…but at least we know they cater to really large vehicles in the parking lot.
Allison | 16-Jul-08 at 5:25 am | Permalink
I think you might be on to a heretofore undiscovered and surefire way to break out of a depressive episode…purchase a good book (or two) and a sinful dessert. That ought to do something to some receptors.
It’s a method I intend to re-test as the need arises. So far, so good!
I have never had Gelato. Or written with a fountain pen.
I can’t really decide which absence from your life is worse…gelato is heavenly…but fountain pens are the singular mating of written expression and art. Drawing up ink from an inkwell and then gently dispensing it back onto rich, creamy paper is the sort of therapy I’m not sure I could survive without.
I strongly recommend you try both in short order.
hollihawk | 17-Jul-08 at 7:55 pm | Permalink
Dude! Next time turn on your AIM.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah…Several of you “IM com padres” pointed out that friends were just a log-on away. Still, I’m not sure I would have been much of a conversationalist before Monday. The guy in the mirror wouldn’t even look at me for a while.
Scomerican Girl | 18-Jul-08 at 4:13 am | Permalink
Ah yes, but they also have those fantastic free golf umbrellas placed strategically around the place to assist with the rain. So even if we require an arc to get there, we’ll stay dry on the run from the parking structure. I kind of love those umbrellas. It’s like the designers had this wonderful plan, but then had to concede that ok, yes, it DOES rain a lot. Maybe this whole ‘open air’ thing wasn’t the best idea…I know, umbrellas!
Yeah, the umbrellas crack me up. What’s better is to see one in other random places around Portland. I considered a photoblog of just Bridgeport umbrellas in non-Bridgeport places…but I figured it’s appeal would have been REALLY limited. So I satisfy myself by just pointing and saying “Hey Look! They stole an umbrella from Bridgeport Village!!!” Which at first make’s me sound like a prick, until I finish by saying “I WANT ONE!!!”
At one time, I heard discussion of enclosing the whole thing in some kind of retractable glass roof; sort of like Safeco Field, except transparent. I just figured they should enclose the whole thing in one of those big glass bubbles from 1950′s Sci-Fi posters. It would be just as practical, and it would look really REALLY cool…
Jade Bistro Jacksonville | 18-Jul-08 at 8:11 am | Permalink
Yum Yum. Lovely Thai Food with delicious peanut sauce :) Deep fried tofu is good too.
Based on the link and the name of the poster, I was really really sure this was spam. BUT, they seem to have taken the time to actually read the post, and the comment is “in context” so…I approved it. But I will be watching this address like a hawk.