I haven't been writing much. (Haven't been shooting much either.)  Walking down the street the other day (which? when?), I found myself diagnosing this wide-angled numbness with obnoxious condescension. I want to know more about the different varieties of depression. I've stumbled across their wikipedia pages, a jumble of Greek and Latin roots: the inability to feel enjoyment, the lack of any feeling whatsoever, the deep despair, the desire to off oneself. How can we call such different beasts by just one name? Is suffering not name enough? (Is life suffering? Is desire?)


Depression is the most boring of sadnesses. This book would have no plot. This is a film without cuts. We like to hear about tragedy, sadness with some kind of story, but what do you do with a feeling that lacks instigation? That's art that's hard to take in—eyes get rolled. The hardest part of my own depression is the feeling that I have no story, that I exist here with just the landscape rolling out around me.


No, scratch that, feeling like I have a story is the cause of my fear and sadness. Dwelling in what went down, anticipating what might, those are the sources of pain. The static landscape offers only comfort. If I don't live in the moment, I can't experience happiness at all.

Then why do we like stories so much? As soon as I start thinking about life beyond this moment, I'm crushed by feelings of shame and doubt. No, hyperbole, not always. But that is how the shame and doubt get in. Stories are why I write at all, the desire to crystallize scattered experience into solid words. Having talked myself in a circle, I should get out while I can.