“I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy.” – Robert Burton 

                  What is a mood? Biology, psychology, ontology? Fit, fate, fault? Yesterday, today, tomorrow? Welcome or dreaded? Astute or obtuse? What I ate, saw, dreamt? Contagious or contained? Pardonable, admirable, despicable?

                  Yes to all and then some. Reason, with its characteristic cockiness, is convinced it can detect a mood’s source. Pharmacology crows that by managing moods they’ve mastered them. Smart folks have been known to celebrate their sorrow. (“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know,” Hemingway is said to have said.) The cheerful favor cheer.

                  I’m bedeviled by moods. The black dog bites and will not let go. Twice I’ve been diagnosed with depression, in part so insurance would pay for the therapies required. Recovery seemed improbable while the disease disabled. I was ashamed, enraged, scared. How could this be happening – I was so sane! I decided if there was no improvement I would exit existence. Such sadness wasn’t serviceable. 

                  All creatures have moods – alert, relaxed, apprehensive, playful; they need them to get by. Even Henry isn’t happy all the time, though his sulks appear medicable with treats. 

                  Humans are moodier because our verbs have so many tenses – not just past, present, and future, but the illimitable colorations of subjunctive – would, should, might, must, and their opposites. “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!” remarked Jefferson sensibly. I have grieved mightily over a bad patch of prose. (Yes, it happens.) How could I have perpetrated such a botch? Maybe I’m losing it (that precious “it”)? Maybe I never had it! Shoot me! Sardonically I observe my Rumpelstiltskin writhing. Who do you think you are, Carll, Shakespeare? (Well, now you mention it…)

                  Moods are iffy tutors. Their variability ought to make us humble. Unsure whether the glass is half-empty or half-full, maybe we should shut up about it. But moods are often absolutists, depriving us of reason. In the depths, I couldn’t envision a tolerable tomorrow. Some glooms visit and never depart, like an unwelcome guest.

                  My anodyne for woe is words. So with the inimitable Burton, as that opening quotation suggests. So, I’m sure, for many of our scribbling sodality. The order imposed by language on the chaos of feelings momentarily delights. Existence for an instant seems to make sense. Syllables clasp hands and dance, inviting us to join. We know the order is temporary and delusory but joy is seldom mistaken, even if brief. There’s no gainsaying the improvement in my spirits since I commenced today’s sortie. If you’re cheerier for our time together, so much the better.

                  I used to be saner than I am now. As an editor and publisher, I prided myself on my “even keel.” I was calm in a crisis, as in Kipling’s poem. Bully for me.

                  Retrospect conjectures I managed my moods by manacling them and locking them in the cellar of my soul. I kept too busy to feel. Out of sight, out of mind. Sorrow peeped out in the poems which popped like pustules – but they were just poems.  Any maker who insists on the objectivity of art – Nabokov was one – is fooling themselves. The only reason to make art is because we must.

                  Love relaxed me enough to admit the slippery insides beneath my stiff shell.  My moods released, romped, abusing their newfound freedom. Sadness became too sad, gladness too glad. I wept, blushing at my weakness.

                  I began this outing wondering at the source of moods and end none the wiser. But I’ve enjoyed our time.