You may have noticed in this space a comparative absence of anguish about the President-elect’s appointments. How can our world be hurtling to hell and I mute? Have I given up? Inured, become indifferent? Am I so sick of the ogre I can’t even mention his name?

All of the above, but none primarily. My reasons are more personal – selfish, some might say.

First, I want the time we share to be joyful, a pleasant oasis of civility in a rancorous hour. I’ve no hope that anything good will come of this administration – anything except an education, which may cost us our freedom and our lives. We the people have shipwrecked the ship of state – with our eyes wide open – and must pay the price. For more than eight years I’ve been caterwauling to avert this calamity but to no avail. Cassandra experiences no satisfaction observing, “I told you so,” because her city has been leveled and her family are dead.

To re-sound this lugubrious theme might repel you and our strolls would cease. Losing you would hurt me more than losing America. Boccaccio’s response to the bubonic plague was to depict privileged triflers flirting and telling naughty stories in elegant exile from dying Florence. Their response to their likely doom was to live life as prettily as possible: carpe diem – and quit carping.

Second, I have nothing useful to add to the public discourse. No sane person now discounts the danger posed by these reckless feckless joyriders. Many of their voters, I suspect,  offered a do-over, would reverse their votes. Everybody’s gagging, gasping, gassing about the risks to national security, public health, civil order, economic wellbeing, climate, world peace, you name it. If this crazy, crack-brained crew makes a wise decision it will only be by accident. Garbage in, garbage out. We’ve got the plague, no help for it, might as well enjoy what time remains.

Lastly, I decided to save myself. Twice in my life I’ve combatted clinical depression. It’s a horrible disease. In its throes you make ghastly choices, even to do yourself in. When it first mugs you, you think life’s not worth the pain and you’ll never recover. Second time around, I surrendered sooner to the prescription – talking therapy, drugs, and exercise, that blessed trifecta – so mended sooner. Having battled the disease once, you dread its recurrence. You brace yourself.

After the election, I noted the onset of familiar symptoms. I was sleepless, impatient, blue, peevish, my words balked. I couldn’t “right myself by writing myself” or “turn that frown upside down”. When Jane asked if I was OK, I snarled I was, though we both knew I wasn’t. I burbled here about grief, which helped some, though not much about my own.

Then I shut off the poison that was sickening me, twisted the stopcock, quit obsessing over the scandal du jour, unsubscribed from all my groaning co-religionists. I refused to discuss the mess even with Jane. I focused elsewhere – on literature, games, Henry, music, ideas, history. As a messy city turns to gleaming jewels as a night jet rises from the runway, so forbears’ eloquence and historical patterns consoled. The air in eternity is calm.

I felt better. Was I running away – or toward? Abandoning my post – or embracing it? Am I coward – or cadet? The moral quandary isn’t simple, but for sure, I’d do nobody any good if I repelled you all with skunk-stink or concluded my span prematurely. Sometimes the courageous choice is to survive, muddle through, hope for the best. That’s where I find myself today.