Scratch Paper

This is not news. But I thought about Styron again the other day.

My mother gave me her copy of Styron’s thin book, Darkness Visible. Her notes in Styron’s margins seem too lighthearted for the subject matter. Mom in that respect reminds me of Nathalie. Nathalie was shocked to find out I would let myself think about suicide, let alone think about it often.

That reaction used to puzzle me, especially since the people having the reaction were not apparently disingenuous. But I now have come to believe that many people go for long periods of time without feeling they would be better off never having been born. Most people have not even investigated enough to have found for example Jerry Hunt’s explanation of how to kill yourself with carbon monoxide gas. Styron did not seem to have through it through as thoroughly and as dispassionately as Hunt. As Styron said, he was having difficulty working and even thinking during the struggle with depression.

Indeed Styron’s words, too, start out inordinately chipper for such a subject as depression. Styron recaptures his mood later on in his book. The book never seemed to help me, at least not nearly as much as the plant medication my doctor prescribed.

Somehow it must have helped Styron. 81’s not bad for struggling with depression for years.

H. P. Lovecraft wrote of the accomplished dreamer Randolph Carter, who “perceived at last the hollowness and futility of real things,” and prepared to wind up his life. Lovecraft, although American, spelled the word for a mix of white and black grey rather than gray.

The longer I live, the less I dream. I can almost remember a dream from childhood. While feverish, I dreamt vampires were after me as I struggled through rubble, a landscape like a bombed out parking lot. With eyes closed I can still see the shades of brown earth clinging to lumps of tan dead grass, and chunks of dark concrete on the ground in front of me. The fear is still almost real.

Yet I can hardly recall any dreams in the last few years. Sleep is death, not adventure. Perhaps that’s why I keep waking up at night.

My tendency is to see glasses as less than half full and leaky.

Brian Greene wrote a book about the state of string theory. In there he had an explanation of how entropy could increase in each temporal direction, both past and future. That would say that things are constantly dilapidating, even as they appear to get better. I felt vindicated in my pessimism, but also disappointed that I had been right.

We have started another blog, about living 5 months here in Austin.