The season of melancholy
“In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.”
— Abbas Kiarostami
These are the darkest days, when we feel shortchanged by sunlight, knowing the worst of the weather will soon be on its way.
More and more people I know say they toss and turn through hours of insomnia at night, tormented by the constant chattering of the thoughts in their head, a nerve-wracking concoction of worry, fear, anxiety, stress and dread.
Outside, the landscape has been transformed into sombreness by a darker palette, as the bright leaves fall and give way to drab greens, browns and greys.
In an empty lot where apartment buildings once stood, the land has been reclaimed by nature, sprouting coarse grasses that are stiff and dry now, and brittle to the touch. Someone has dumped a pile of black bags of garbage at the foot of a pole.
On the walking trail that winds along the river, fronds of fireweed are bent at the waist, their clumps of white silk hanging untidily like the wigs of courtiers made woozy by drink. Snails climb slowly up reedy stalks tethered by slender strands of slime. The leaves of the maple trees are yellow and blighted with black spots, like the skin of a poisonous frog.
The earth reeks of rot and death, and blue jays flit nervously through increasingly skeletal branches. With their sharp, strident cries they seem to be urging you on to someplace more hospitable.
The darkness comes as a sudden shock, like a black hood thrown over everything, and it happens earlier every day. Soon the mornings will be dark as well, and in the hours before that, you find yourself lying awake with a grim sense of foreboding.
You think about how more and more people you know and love have been stricken by ill health, as if we’ve all bought tickets for some cursed lottery and it’s just a matter of time.
I don’t know if it’s lingering effects from the divisiveness of the federal election or the time of year, or a state of mind, or all three, but there seems to be ugliness where there was beauty just a couple of weeks ago.
Out walking, I see a rat that has been eviscerated in the park, its body mostly reduced to a rumpled hank of skin and fur, as if crows had been interrupted while they were clumsily preparing it for taxidermy. The dog narrowly avoids stepping on a discarded hypodermic needle in the grass.
On an abandoned stretch of road in Pleasantville, cut off from traffic with concrete barriers, someone has smashed a six-pack’s worth of brown beer bottles all over the cracked pavement, the glass shards glinting evilly.
On Twitter — known for its virulence but where, oddly enough, you can often find people sending each other messages of support and encouragement, there’s a new video circulating of a woman berating staff at a drug store in Burnaby, B.C. for speaking to each other in a language other than English.
“Shut up,” the woman yells, pointing her finger in a clerk’s face.
“Speak English in Canada,” she says as her diatribe continues, standing in front of the counter with a young boy by her side. “You’re rude, you are rude. Go somewhere else. … F-king idiot.”
It’s hard to find light, sometimes, in this kind of darkness. It’s hard to summon forgiveness in the face of intolerance and cruelty.
But — and without wanting to sound all “this-too-shall-pass” — my inner optimist is still trying to be heard.
This is not to make light of someone’s clinical depression or constant feelings of despair.
Sometimes it’s hard for any of us to see a clear path ahead, and it’s a harder struggle if pain or loneliness is dragging you down, but just remember that these shorter, dark days will eventually give way to the light. Till then, maybe we can offer each other the encouragement we need to look more closely at the world to find the magic and kindness still waiting there.