This weekend, I will brave a four hour barf bus to enjoy a weekend in Beantown. Me, Louis G, Eric, Rob, Jake, and maybe this kid Corey are taking somewhat of a dude weekend up in the Walking City. So, if anyone knows any spots we should hit up in the Hub, let me know because I w….
Phew, that paragraph was exhausting. I couldn’t think of much to say about Boston and instead tried to insert nicknames for the city in order to fill space.
In fact, lately I’ve been having difficulty thinking of much to write about. Anything blog worthy, at least. Blog worthy-yuk. Why is this? Where is my mind? What would atrophy a normally churning mind filled with half-cocked ideas and hardly thought out proclamations in a week? Could it be that seven days of boozing with Louis G has turned my mind into a pink margarita? Nah, that can’t be right. Have three months of work as a mindless city drone waiting to be devoured by the metaphorical queen bee of bureaucratic society gradually digressed my brain power to that of a third grader’s? Does that bee analogy even make sense? Obviously not. But what happened to my brain? Where did my ideas go?
For a long time, through most of college, my thoughts were clouded by fog. Everything I tried to wonder about exclusively, things I wanted on the tip of my conscious tongue, was behind opaque glass. I could only think in images, in general motions, in figures, not specific constructed thoughts. It’s difficult to explain the feeling, other than you know it when it’s there. It’s roughly like the side effect of the devil’s weed: never total awareness, even when you desire it.
The fog is a coupling of anxiety and general despair. John Cheever talks about the fog in Bullet Park. The fog pushes Hammer to drinking and madness. Although Hammer recognizes the fog, he never speculates on a specific cause, largely because there is no cause, no epicenter of haze. He lies and waits for a clearing, unable to sleep or eat. He changes his surroundings desperately but seems to know all active efforts to completely escape the fog are useless. He only hopes to escape through the minutia in life; living completely in a yellow room that brings him peace. What pains him most is the inability to leave. But Hammer fights, he knows it is a loosing battle, but he fights anyway.
Perhaps what Cheever misses in his consideration of the fog is the apathy. Apathy is a leading symptom. The knowledge that there is a pervasive nothingness, a falseness in life, and not caring to act against it.
I hated the fog at first, but slowly accepted it once I realized it was always present. It’s like someone pulled off my rose colored glasses and exposed me to the dullness of reality. I grew comfortable. I also recognized the importance in acknowledging the fog. Like Walker Percy quotes Soren Kierkeggard in The Moviegoer, “the specific quality in despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair.” Since I recognized the truth, I could finally work within the truth. Also, like The Moviegoer, I grew content in an existence within. The fog was there and after brief searches for escape, I accepted the damp, clouding blanket. The search for escape was exhausting, so I stayed inside.
And because I didn’t fight the fog, the fog cleared. Out of apathy and love and interest in various things, I seemed to see things again. I could think with complete mindfulness. In fact, it’s cleared so much I forget what it feels like. I have occasions of immersion in the haze, but I’ve generally lost the Fear, the Dread, malaise, or whatever you want to call it. And this has inspired a different kind of apathy. I’m happy tending to my garden.
Is this why I can’t think of anything to say? Because a life without fog is a life of happiness? I miss the edge of the fog; having a foot in both worlds. Anxiety and despair were, on some level, exciting.
But maybe, and perhaps the scariest thought, I’m back in the fog and don’t know it. Has the war against the malaise and routine been lost, and I didn’t even notice the white flag? Did I put on my rose colored glasses again? I don't feel passion about much this past bit, at least not enough to write about. Is this surely a false sun?
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