August 9, 2006
Lighthearted
From time to time, readers respond to an OoN that triggers their imagination [or ire or both]. The way they point out my oversight often deepens my insight.
Only recently, I had made some disparaging remarks about Texas and about jazz in Houston. A fellow Texan called my hand and rightly said I needn’t talk that way about Texas, and that there is plenty of jazz in Houston. He is right, I answered. Later, he wrote that he’d responded before his first cup of coffee and sort of apologized, but he needn’t have.
Another time, I wrote that I’d read somewhere that vines do so well because they don’t need trunks and things like other plants, they just cling, and so they can devote all their chlorophyl to their own deserts. I’d commented that when Jesus said he was the vine, it was one of his lesser analogies in my opinion, since he hardly ever acted like one.
A reader took issue and wrote that vines do not just cling. She wrote that they provide shade and grapes [for eating and for wine] and homes for bugs and spiders and hiding places for tiny prey, and beauty, and that they last for a long, long time, whether nurtured or not. She thought that Jesus was right on target, and that I should know better, being a preacher and all.
Sometimes I ask how readers discovered OoN and, if they wish, to tell me a bit about themselves. Then I forget when I’ve asked the same person twice. One lawyer very graciously reminded me that I’d asked him before and that his first OoN was one about some dog. I’d written about an Australian terrier that is not exactly Australian, but probably a Tennessean, not very proud of it, and having a hard time playing up the down-under role. That was Spenser, spelled with an “s,” not a “c,” and named primarily for Robert B Parker’s private eye who, in turn, is named for the poet. Spenser had acted strangely in my presence, I’d thought, turning in circles and sliding around on a hardwood floor whenever I spoke. I saw Spenser again just the other night. He showed no signs of our previous encounter.
The second time I wrote this person, he noted that I no longer seemed as lighthearted as once I had, that perhaps that is because, in the meanwhile, the world has grown darker. I am grateful for that observation and suspect it is true, but that’s no excuse for my growing darker with it. I hope it was not some variety of Seasonal Affective Disorder which is, according to Google, my staff consultant, a type of “winter depression” that affects millions of people world wide. Usually, I suppose, when there’s not enough light at hand.
For millions of people, SAD is no joke, but a serious debilitating illness preventing it’s sufferers from functioning normally during winter. Another type is subsyndromal SAD or “winter blues,” a milder form of SAD which can cause discomfort but is not so seriously debilitating. The malady may begin at any age, but the main age of onset is between 18 and 30 years. To speak of the world as growing darker is, of course, a metaphor, but a sad one, any way you look at it.
Nobody, even that old quantum mechanic Werner Heisenberg, seems to know whether light is particle or wave, but that shouldn’t make all that much difference. Light is sometimes as good as it gets and always a pleasant way for to lighten one’s heart.
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