Hey Fogmeisters (Fans of Good Morning + meister; or, alternately, Masters of the Fog),
Carll is low. He’ll never mention it because he thinks it’s his mission not to. Writers, he keeps saying, are supposed to improve things, not make you want to shoot yourself. Bellyaching and caterwauling, unless they lead to affirmation, only exacerbate. Hallelujah, he perseverates when his tone is diapasonal, is our moral responsibility! (Yeh, I know, but it takes all sorts.) He doesn’t even tell Jane, not in so many words, but she knows, from the way he slumps around, banging pots and sighing over the least little thing.
This is not a clinical depression, he repeats (to me, because he thinks I’m not listening, or if listening, comprehending, or if comprehending, compassionating): been there, done that; this “slough of despond” (whatever that is) isn’t anything you can remediate with therapist or pill. Personally, he’s way fine, almost “Henry-happy” (a term of art in this household). It’s just that the world is f***d up, humanity a menace and a minus. He reverts regularly to that Pogo cartoon: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
How could humans be so stupid, he asks over and over, when we’re so smart! Then he looks at me, as if to say, “even stupid dogs know better.” His look is not unkind – he and Jane love me loads – but it sure aint flattering. Even dogs—hrrf!! I should snarl, “Back at you,” but why pick a fight, especially while awaiting breakfast?
The evidence of human stupidity he adduces tirelessly (and doggedly, gotta say, though some things bear repeating): war, climate mayhem, lying, cruelty, loutishness, Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, blah, blah, blah. (I never use the verb perseverate casually.) We’re disgusting, dangerous, disheartening, damn dispiriting, he alliterates like a broken record if you remember them. We’re destroying our planet and maybe before Kai, Juno, Dion, Riley (he’s reciting their grandkids like a mantra) get to enjoy it!
And what am I doing about it? Here his grandiose Galahad complex kicks in, as if he alone were charged with rescuing his species (and maybe mine). He acknowledges the absurdity of this conceit, may even ridicule himself, but hey, he argues, if more people took the welfare of the world more seriously maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. If he exaggerates the influence of his eloquence (eloquence is his word), so what? At least he’s trying.
Because he can’t stop talking, he leaves you little to say, can’t get a word in edgewise. (Love that cliche, been waiting to deploy it.) Console him with a lick or nuzzle maybe (while nudging him toward breakfast preparation – “They also serve who stand and wait” – Milton, Sonnet 19), fix him with my aqueous chestnut eyes as if I understood, get him to pat me – on my belly preferably – and gradually he’s feeling better, less slough-of-despond-ishly, prepared to greet the dawn. Can things be so bad, the argument goes, with pals like Henry? Turn that frown upside down, you ninny!
I feel for him. His brain-disease is, of course, the one to which humans are uniquely susceptible: future-think. They extrapolate to annihilate, then get glum about it. Dogs are smarter (in this department, maybe most). We don’t pay tomorrow no never-mind, neither do we mourn yesterday, and today is worth a hallelujah and then some. Our glass is always half-full and if it’s empty, just wait a minim and someone will refill it. This may sound irresponsible, grasshopper-ish (as in the fable), but it sure makes it easier to get by.