The whirring internal machine, its gears grinding not to a halt but to a pace that emits a low hum, a steady and almost imperceptible hum: the Greeks would not have seen it this way.
Simply put, it was a result of black bile, the small fruit of the gall bladder perched under the liver somehow over-ripened and then becoming fetid. So the ancients
would have us believe. But the overly-emotional and contrarian Romans saw it as a kind of mourning for one’s self. I trust the ancients but I have never given any of this credence because I cannot understand
how one does this, mourn one’s self. Down by the shoreline—the Pacific wrestling with far more important philosophical issues—I recall the English notion
of it being a wistfulness, something John Donne wore successfully as a fashion statement. But how does one wear wistfulness well unless one is a true believer?
The humors within me are unbalanced, and I doubt they were ever really in balance to begin with, ever in that rare but beautiful thing the scientists call equilibrium.
My gall bladder squeezes and wrenches, or so I imagine. I am wistful and morose and I am certain black bile is streaming through my body as I walk beside this seashore.
The small birds scrambling away from the advancing surf; the sun climbing overhead shortening shadows; the sound of the waves hushing the cries of gulls: I have no idea where any of this ends up.
To be balanced, to be without either peaks or troughs: do tell me what that is like… This contemplating, this mulling over, often leads to a moment a few weeks from now,
the one in which everything suddenly shines with clarity, where my fingers race to put down the words, my fingers so quick on the keyboard it will seem like a god-damned miracle.
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