Melancholy, Again

The ability to write a new thing, an entirely new train of thought, a new idea, think about something else, something different, something else seems difficult. When we are almost complacent, half seduced by nature and half by this material world, we are reminded of our mortality and of those around us. It should not shock us but it does since we almost believe that death happens to others and not us, the most ignoble and unfortunate assaults on our mortal frames happen in medical text books to people unwittingly or to those who are in some way prone.

Hence this sadness and this melancholy again. This inability to write anything cheerful, different and wise. For true wisdom is outside lamentation and in acceptance, outside defiance and in fortitude. The same thought runs through these paragraphs whenever it suits me, thoughts of parting and meeting, of desire and memory. I thus naturally look for allies, for kind words and sullen prose, for sad poems. Sometimes one gets lucky and discovers The Loser and so on, because the great bulk of sad and not so cheerful reading has finished by now, leaving no trace however.

Yet I remember that I did not want to write about myself but about the uncertainty of being, the hilarious idea of trying to seek permanence and the helplessness of trying to communicate or help another kindred spirit, one in some agony and in distress. For words are useless when nights are long, poems worth nothing in desert suns, all philosophy child babble and heart's echoes songless when the spirit is mute.

Our mortality prevents the establishment of anything realistic and permanent. Words and people have piled up over the centuries and vanished. Culture and barbarism have seen eye to eye and reason has rubbed shoulder with ignorance. After winter, usually after a cold winter, the suffering earth has forgotten and welcomed spring and warmth as a natural friend, ignoring the myriad deaths that winter claimed. Then all that spring and summer do is to prepare for a torturous falling, a turning of colours, a failure of holding, a maturing, a call and a plea for winter and death.

Everything artistic and aesthetic and things barren and crude die in the way of death. How many brave and authentic thoughts and how many sad and tender expressions melt in its heat. We who linger outside the domain of words, outside the real realms of writing greatness too feel the papable sadness of this world.