Written sometime between 11pm and 7am at the what? Roadway Inn? motel, anyway, Grants, New Mexico. Probably 2002, 2003. Hell, it wasn’t me who was depressed. Can’t recall what inspired this:
The Voyeur
Soul sucked darkness from eternity
Fashioned this, my tiny room;
This monumental construct of infirmity;
This animated tomb
With a peephole to observe
The profanity:
The bell shaped curve
Of insanity.
From Poems of the New Old West, copyright 2003, NineLives Press, Jack Purcell
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I noticed on the television down at the Olathe Community Center to be stared at by people on treadmills and other torture machines that some big name celebrity killed himself. Guy who was in an amusing movie once about a house that an airplane crashed into and he bought it because it had been pre-disastered.
I don’t know. Maybe the guy was terminally ill, or maybe just depressed. That crap can surely happen. Back in my younger days I used to go into a black pit of depression there seemed no way out of. Where it seemed the Universe was trying to drag me into the hole a person doesn’t come back out of, the way this Williams guy exited.
I was lucky in a lot of ways, though I’m not sure what all of them were. I had a name for the ‘entity’ that seemed to take possession of my mind and spirit during those times. I called it the blue demon. Because it seemed to be a real being.
And the way I eventually got it into my past so’s I have to work to remember about it, was by treating it as a living, thinking creature with a will I could do battle with, wrestle it to the ground. Banish it from my psyche.
And once I discovered I could do that and did it successfully and thoroughly one time, afterward it was a lot easier. For decades afterward anytime I sensed that blue demon out of the corner of my perceptions I’d immediately jump in and do battle with it again, drive it out before it got a foothold.
It worked so well for me that I’ve sometimes gone years, maybe decades without ever sensing it, doing battle with it. But it’s still there, lurking, waiting for things to happen in its favor. When my health began the slide down the slippery slope the old blue demon tried whispering to me out of the wings a few times.
Interestingly, I think I have a lot of the symptoms of clinical depression right now, today, minus the blue demon black pit and the anguish that goes with it. I’m a happy, lucky man, grateful and congratulating myself for it a thousand times per day.
But I can’t force myself to open my mail. I don’t answer the telephone unless I’m confident who is calling. Have to force myself to do anything that falls into the arena of acknowledging one hell of a lot of life that would love to come in and say hello.
I’m probably going to have to do something about that. Maybe give it a name, shake hands with it, and do battle. I’m just not there yet.
Old Jules
Tagged culture, depression, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, philosophy, psychology, senior citizens
Hi readers.
I spent a lot of time on the phone with a guy I barely know last night. He called me to talk about the chronic determination he has to kill this body he lives in. Old guy, mutual friends with some friends of mine who are concerned about him, suggested we talk.
The guy lives in California, seems to occupy a situation so similar to my own it’s unsettling to me, hearing how unhappy he is with it, how much he thinks he hasn’t got that he wishes he had. Me listening as he describes it, thinking, wow, that sounds cool. Sheeze, I could stand some of THAT.
But I was lucky enough to have been where he is long enough ago so’s when he tells me about the abyss he’s looking into I know what he’s speaking of. Even though it’s foreign country to me.
I know how I climbed out of it, probably even understand why I managed it. And telling him doesn’t help him a bit so far as I can discern. The only help I can be is listening to him, same as the friends who arranged for us to talk listen to him and can’t actually help.
I am what I’d call an expert on me being happy, damned good at the job. But I do recall having a nest of demons living in my head, a self-sustaining fluctuating feed-on-itself hell that seemed to leave self-destruction as the only alternative that made sense.
Listening to the echo of that so long ago in my past from an old guy who lives so nearly to the way I live today skates along the edge of bizarre. And as nearly as I can tell there’s not one thing I can tell him that will provide a means for him to escape.
Because I came away with the feeling he’s in love with that nest of demons or gives them more room to talk with him listening than he gives anyone else who’s talking to him, cares about him. And they’re telling him the only escape is killing the body he lives in.
After we finished talking I was lying there scratching a cat behind the ears awed how he and I managed to get to opposite ends of the spectrum, how the Universe can manage having room for both of us.
Old Jules
Posted in America, Human Behavior
Tagged clinical depression, culture, depression, environment, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, philosophy, psychology, society, sociology, suicide
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
