M.E. Breen

I’m in one of those odd states where all signs point to Good: sun outside; a reasonable level of tidiness inside; a pocket of free time, not too wide or deep; a recent series of affectionate phone conversations; a palatable thing in the fridge to eat for lunch; tedious back exercises already completed for the day. But my mood arrow insists on sticking in the Poor-to-Bad zone. What color would that zone be? A muddy green?

Anyway, I thought maybe I’d go into the mood, and see if there was something interesting in there, or at least see if I could overcome ennui through actual sadness. I dug out a double live Ani DiFranco CD that performed cathartic wonders during a cross-country drive in my early twenties, but all that’s done so far is make me feel irritated by Youthful Intensity, Ani’s and, apparently, once, mine.

They had a sand-castle competition on Ocean Beach a month ago. I missed the competition, but Truckstop and I came across the remains the next day. These were giant castles, and I think most of them actually hadn’t been castles, but animals or towns or scenes from books. There were the remnants of a very hungry caterpillar and ruins of the pyramids of Giza, and lots of indeterminate valleys and hillocks. The undulations in the sand reminded me of walking around the fields on the coast of Normandy. A week later there were still a few dents and lumps, which was sort of amazing, considering the strength of the tide out there and the force of the wind. Today I feel like a person made of sand, slowly being blown to bits by small worries and indecisions and hesitations.

Eliot says something about this in Middlemarch. The section starts with Lydgate’s growing uneasiness about his relationship with his wife, Rosamond, especially as it touches on his ambitions as a scientist, and then moves on:

“But [Lydgate's] endurance was mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances, wife or husband included. It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us. Lydgate was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our lives. And on Lydgate’s enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.”

I should add that the dog, maybe sniffing out my incipient blues like these dogs they say can smell disease or detect seizures coming on, sympathetically manufactured her own petty degrading care by eating tripe. So here we are, sad and bilious, but not so alone as Lydgate.