A middle-aged white guy sits in the spring semester offering of English 101 with the kids who flunked it during the fall semester (the school wouldn't accept my CLEP credit from 1972, but it turned out good).  We were discussing some short story that I forget, now.  The teacher was pointing out the meaning of a passage.  I didn't see it all and, being the smart-ass I sometimes am, said I thought she might be over reading the passage.  She was taken somewhat aback but said I might be right.  She is also the teacher who encouraged me to pursue technical writing.

My aversion to over reading things started in high school.  In senior English, we were reading Romeo and Juliet.  Our teacher was fresh out of college and no more than 4 years older than us.  She mentioned that the average contemporary audience member of a Shakespeare play had no more than a sixth grade education.  She was picking the play apart, line by line by line.  I finally raised my smart-assed hand and asked how, if the audience had no better than a sixth grade education, could they find all the meaning she was finding in the play?  She sputtered and said something about the people having intimate knowledge of the underlying themes, and so forth.  I can only imagine the expletives she used in the teachers' lounge.

As with beauty, meaning is in the eye of the beholder.  Damn, this is going to be a daunting segue to an Eagles song.  The more I listen to Hotel California, the more I find in it.  I won't go into any of it, because I'm probably over reading it.  I love this video.  I think it's from a tour the Eagles did in 1994.  I like the lyrics, the musicality, the musicianship, the chemistry of the performers that seems to transcend any personal differences and coalesces around the music.  I especially like the interaction between Don Felder and Joe Walsh (the lead acoustic guitarists), and I have a soft spot for Spanish style guitar.  I hope you enjoy.

Hotel California

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?  One, but the light bulb must have a sincere desire to change.

I called in sick today, but you can’t see a wound, hear a cough, feel a fever, find an abnormal lab value, palpate a swollen gland, or visualize a spot on an X-ray.  I’m tired with what I call that “bad kind of tired.”  Other than a profound sense of fatigue, the only other physical feeling is that of my brain having broken loose from its moorings and floating on water; it’s an odd sensation.

I’ve lived with clinical depression for the past 15 years or so.  Nothing special about that.  Depression is just another malady like diabetes or hypertension.  You can’t cure them, only control them or ameliorate their symptoms.  Occasionally, despite your best efforts and religiously taking medication and watching your diet and following doctor’s orders, your blood pressure or blood sugar spikes, or you get that “bad kind of tired.”

It’s strange to have a disease where you can’t point to where it hurts or measure or see anything abnormal.  You start to wonder if maybe you’re just weak and really should pull yourself up by the bootstraps.  But you also have a sense that it’s more than just a character flaw.  Sometimes, you wish you would just go insane and get it over with.  Mostly, you hope your family and the people you work with can understand that you do occasionally catch a cold of sorts, and for me, I try to overlook the stigma I’ve attached to my own mental illness, and that’s the most difficult part.

I am the light bulb.  I have changed and give off a little light, even, if like the light bulb, I got a little screwed in the process and if you shake me, you can still hear stray bits of filament rattling around inside.  Why did I write this?  I wanted to, and I needed to, and maybe someone needed to hear it and begin to know that what they feel isn’t all that out of the ordinary.  Depression isolates; sharing integrates.