…letters home…

It would be far easier to be a depressive if I didn’t love so many things.

Fortunately, depression has its own devices, a key one being its remarkable ability to suppress just such love.

I’ve been home from Finland now for about six weeks or so. My last two trips to Finland were two trips to Finland too many. The intervening break would have been my crisis but it wasn’t my turn, so I stiff-upper-lipped, which was the right thing to do considering everything other than my mental health. I came home right before Christmas and I didn’t so much melt down, I just kinda bonelessly-slumped down, with here and there a smile, there and here a day of holding real still in bed.

Things are finally starting to give, though.  This week I’ve had a ton of things-I-love. In no particular order:

• Driving with Virginia is one of our most consistently lovely dates. We just drive and talk and sing.
• D&D’ing with the teens is cool when we do it, and fun all week preparing. Our first official in-joke quote: “But think of the children!”
• Video’ing with Helen is a blast, especially when we watch pre-viewed stand-up. (She skips to the good parts.)
• Riding around tunes-ing is just plain healing for me. Virginia bought me a good car with a great stereo.
• Hanging with Angela happens remotely, either chat or voice, but either way it’s always interesting what we get in to.
• Reading great writing is one very reliable joy: this week a bio of Louis Armstrong and Zadie Smith essays.
• Beer and basketball with Doug hasn’t happened in forever, but I had a great time, and we even talked about important stuff. Go Bulls!!

So I’ve had quite a time this week, and I didn’t even list it all.

Of course, it was me, so the week was almost over before I started to perk up. Still better late than never. Maybe next week the momentum will keep going, but this time I’ll be ready!

P.S. Write me. All of you. Right away.

P.P.S. Look at this amazing graphic:

I am not the only source of letters out there in the big world of web.

A favorite long-term blog of mine is called Letters of Note. Sometimes historical, often literary, occasionally just wonderful, this is a great place for folks who like an article or two a week.

Here’s a recent entry. (Click the image to read the back story.)

…scouring the internet to bring you the finest documentary footage…

…yes, i see it now…

All the news they didn’t want you to know. Wonder sometimes why we have a first amendment? I believe this speaks directly.

GeePawHill, 24/7/365, kickin’ it old school. muckraking Geraldo.

…my decline continues…

I am re-reading Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Well, kinda re-reading.

I read 3/4 of the first humongous volume before. I have not read that last quarter or any of the second humongous volume. (I stress humonganeity ‘cuz the work is actually, idunno, 7 or 9 or 13 volumes long, but here in meatspace, it’s usually produced in two meta-volumes.)

Big-Head Eddie Gibbon

I absolutely love it. Here, demonstrated in one quote, are my two reasons:

Artaxerxes had served with great reputation in the armies of Artaban, the last king of the Parthians, and it appears that he was driven into exile and rebellion by royal ingratitude, the customary reward for superior merit.

I’m sure you noticed the second amazing thing about this dude already: he’s funny. Okay, alright, fair enough, not side-splittingly-hurt-yourself-cry-and-pee-your-pants funny. But funny. Droll. Chuckle-y at the very least. If you think that’s common you just don’t get out to the library often enough.

Opinionated, too. When I read history, I especially wish an author to have an opinion, a place to stand. Gibbon, whose head was said to be comically too large for his body, he got some opinion goin’ on.

There are sly little jokes like this every page or three, especially in the legendary footnotes. (Generations of schoolboys have struggled on Gibbon’s account, because all the dirty parts of the book are in Latin footnotes. I have no Latin whatever, of course, so I can only imagine. No matter, the English footnotes are pretty g00d as is.)

Oh! The first amazing thing, the invisible one: Gibbon wrote those words 235 years ago, but it reads like any reasonably intellectual prose you’d find today. Go re-read it.

His fluency startles. And the whole thing reads that way. There are maybe a half-dozen words that seem strange in meaning to a modern. As an example, he uses sensibly and insensibly to mean awareness or the lack thereof, a meaning long lost to us. Other than that, if you can read The Atlantic Monthly you can read Gibbon.

Humor, fluency, and history. What’s not to love?

A week or two ago, my favorite crazy-funny writer, The Bloggess  put up this picture of a sign she put up on a local bulletin board and a couple of responses:

Since then, things have changed somewhat.  Go here to see how:  http://thebloggess.com/2011/10/missing-2/

This courtesy of http://cthulhu-2012.com/

I love it that someone had the personal experience and the visual sense and the just-plain-funniness.