It shames me how many dozens of hours I’ve wasted since November Fifth playing online backgammon. Shame’s too weak a verb – scandalizes. I wouldn’t mention it only that would be to welch on my deal with myself and betray your trust. I hold with Terrence “Homo sum humani nihil a me alienum puto – I am human, I think nothing about humans alien to me.” That we are all characteristic samples of our species is my essential premise: if I’ve screwed up, who hasn’t, each in our way. Nothing about myself is too terrible to confess.

This backgammon spree comes close. Why on earth! I didn’t mean to, want to; I wasn’t bored or weary of writing or reading; I hadn’t been kneecapped by depression; big dreams bellied my sails; my time felt way too short; and here I was frittering it – to no purpose – into the we hours – exhausting myself and puzzling Jane. What a waste of chance! I gained nothing facing off against Abdul, Ababa or Mizwestexas; the dice felt rigged; I wasn’t betting – what was going on? I hated this weakness, this apostasy to my sweet vocation, but couldn’t stop myself. I filed my missives regularly – bless the discipline for keeping me sane – but neglected other tasks. Addicts must feel this way, helpless in the grip of mania, but was that me? Granted, I was addicted to writing, music, beauty, but this was different. This was wrong – irresponsible, profligate, reprehensible – yet here I was, wide-eyed and wan, moving checkers on my screen.

Soon, I soothed myself, this avidity would abate. And it has – three months later – I’m less frantic, more focused, less mastered by my incubus. Whatever my fever, it broke, I survived, I can make a topic of it, no crying over spilt milk. But why, I keep wondering, why?

November Fifth unraveled me. We selected as leader the embodiment of everything wrong with our kind. I won’t repeat why I felt this – my rhetoric exhausts me – but I felt it in every fiber. Making the mistake the first time was bad – but to repeat it? “After such knowledge,” groaned T.S. Eliot’s Gerontion, “what forgiveness?”

If my species could misbehave so vilely, I wanted out. Jonathan Swift, in his epitaph, welcomed the relief of the grave, where “saeva indignatio – savage indignation” would no longer lacerate his breast. I did not want to die, just forget. Backgammon abducted my intellect so it couldn’t brood. Backgammon played fast makes the brain pant. I was free here. Winning or losing scarcely mattered so long as I didn’t have to think.

Brains heal like other body parts. Mine knew it needed separation to recuperate so insisted on it, my directives be damned. I had to ingest and digest this bitter realization: I had been a fool to trust the essential sense of my tribe. So be it. I would find my way back to hallelujah notwithstanding the facts.

Gladness is an achievement, not a condition. This took me a lifetime to realize. We make ourselves rejoice – because gladness is preferable, a gift to all. Art is our prosthesis, our essential crutch, reminding us of the beauty of being. Art is gladness in action. This was Auden’s conclusion in his beautiful poem mourning and celebrating Yeats:

Backgammon, it turns out, was my brain’s healing spa. I return refreshed.