Rats in a Cage

When we were both younger men, people used to tell me I looked like Billy Corgan. Personally, I never thought we looked very similar but I enjoyed being compared to a rock star more than I enjoyed being compared to Kid in the Hall Bruce McCullough, so I didn’t mind. I’m reminded of that time because I’ve had a Smashing Pumpkins lyric stuck in my head for the last several days. When song lyrics pop unbidden to mind, I’ve learned to pay attention to them because they’re usually indicative of something either subtle or not-so-subtle going on in my sub-conscious. For example, when the lyric “I like big butts and I cannot lie” recently conjured itself into my mind, I realized that my sub-conscious was trying to tell me that I like big butts (little butts, too). An important message, no doubt. In this case, the Pumpkins lyric that’s been playing in my head on a loop is more sinister: “The world is a vampire.”

No coincidence, perhaps, that my mood over the last week or so has been similarly bleak. I wrote about feeling heartbroken last week. What I haven’t written about is my loss of appetite and general malaise. Right now, my days are organized around: how late I can sleep, when can I nap, and when I can go back to bed? Symptoms of depression? You betcha. It’s not a debilitating sort of depression where I can’t function. On the contrary, I’m functioning well, getting things accomplished, spending some of my free time ranting against the antisemitic Elon Musk on Twitter. But it all feels kind of joyless. I’m walking around like the undead and it’s unclear to me whether the world is the vampire or I am.

Pictured: me?

This isn’t my first depressive episode. My brain chemistry has always been a little fucked-up. Therapy, which I have undergone at various points, hasn’t done much to help. The Citalopram I take has done a good job keeping it at bay for years, but there are times, like now, when the blackness breaks through. Up the dosage? Sure. Is that a solution? A balm at best, but I like balms.

Part of my problem is the awful realization that the world is, indeed, a vampire. At least my world. The culture in which I live. The values under which I have been raised. Acquisition, competitiveness, individualism over community. This is my – our – world.

There’s a street here in Savannah called Jones St. Tourists take pictures of it because it’s widely known as the most beautiful street in the city, and one of the prettiest in the country. Gorgeous townhouses, cobblestone streets, sidewalks draped with Spanish moss. One of the first things one learns upon arriving here is that the expression “Keeping up with the Joneses” supposedly originates because of that street. How does one compare to those on Jones St.? How do those on Jones compare to each other? How much pressure to keep up appearances, to maintain, to elevate? That’s my culture and the culture of my country. Maybe of my entire hemisphere. I’m exhausted with all of it, can feel my platelets being sucked away one by one. And I don’t know what to do about it.

Jones St.

My wife suggested I get into yoga. Deep yoga. Vedic yoga. It’s a good suggestion but do I really see myself dragging a yoga mat to some stinky studio to listen to my fellow student’s farts and queefs? I don’t know. Do I self-medicate with benzos and Ambien? Do I take up meditation (again?) How does a fish survive out of water? How do any of us make it through this world with more than at least half of our brains still intact?

It’s not as if I don’t appreciate the good. There’s a lot of good. Example: if I want a pencil, there’s probably twenty places I can get a pencil within ten minutes of my house. That’s a goddamn miracle right there. Any material thing I can imagine I can have (within my dwindling budget). I don’t take that for granted. But it’s not enough, is it? It’s not enough to have a pizza brought to your door in thirty minutes or less. Pizza can go a long way towards filling the void, no doubt, but not all the way.

Also me?

One of the reasons I write so much about UFOs, perhaps, is because they offer an alternative. Nobody understands the nature of that alternative, only that there might be something else out there. For good or ill, nobody knows, but the simple promise of an alternative is mighty attractive. Because if there’s one alternative to this vacuous earthly life, maybe there are others. And still others beyond those. The theologian Diane Walsh Pasulka, author of American Cosmic and the new Encounters, thinks that the growing interest in UFOs might herald the beginning of a new religion. For a long time, I didn’t understand what the hell that meant. What do weird Tic-Tac looking things have to do with religion? But now I think I understand.

It's not that people will one day worship our alien overlords. It’s that the mere existence of anomalous objects opens the door to all kinds of alternative realities. There are people like me – and, I suspect, like many of you – desperate to find a better way to understand this world and our places in it. We are made for more than consumption. Of that I am sure. We are made, as best as I can tell, for two purposes: to seek and to love. We seek out what we do not know and we share what we find with those we love. Ideally, “those we love” includes the whole of the world. But, realistically, it’s probably a handful of folks and maybe a dog.

These are tough times for a lot of people. Same as it ever was. Another song lyric, equally apt. If you’re feeling low for whatever reason, I’m right there with you. If you’re feeling like the world doesn’t make a lot of sense, I’m right there with you. If reality itself seems tenuous at best, I’m on your side. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. Don’t let the world suck the life out of you. Keep seeking, keep loving. And try to get the depressing lyrics out of your head. Replace them with something cheerier if you can. Maybe Mmmbop? If that fails, get yerself outside and find a big butt or two to admire.