Winston Churchill referred to his darker moods as his “black dog.”
That black dog has surely visited most of us. When he comes trotting down the path, our lovely blue morning suddenly turns gray as a winter sea. He circles round us, and our mood drops like a barometer before a storm. He growls, and our bright optimism shrinks in size to a grain of sand.
That black dog has surely visited most of us. When he comes trotting down the path, our lovely blue morning suddenly turns gray as a winter sea. He circles round us, and our mood drops like a barometer before a storm. He growls, and our bright optimism shrinks in size to a grain of sand.
We have many names for this black dog: “the blues,” “down in the dumps,” “down in the mouth,” “in the pits.” Here, for reasons that will become apparent, I will refer to my own black dog as “The Beast”.
Like all human beings, I am sometimes beset by the blues. A week of rainy weather can induce melancholy; a small failure can bring on an evening of glum introspection; an unkind look or a sharp word can throw me into gloomy funk.
The Beast was different.
This past April was a month of death: my grandson, my dad, and a neighbor. Along with these trials came a hurricane of tests, Advanced Placement examinations, and finals in the classes I teach.
In the middle of this storm The Beast appeared. He entered into me and made himself so much at home that for days and then weeks my mind and heart felt filled with lead. Every morning I woke hopeful that my dark sorrow had vanished, but there it crouched, The Beast, staring at me. Willing away this despondency, praying it away, ignoring it: nothing worked. Finally, to take a phrase from the Old Book, I set my face like flint and simply carried on. In front of my students I concealed that flint by pasting a smile on my face, a mask to hide my troubles, but wearing that disguise only added to my burdens.
On Friday May 13th—an inauspicious date, as I dislike the number thirteen—I drove to Front Royal, Virginia, to attend the graduation festivities for my youngest son, Jeremy. Along the way I stopped near Harrisonburg, Virginia, at the Green Valley Book Fair, which consists of two warehouses jammed full of discounted books. Here in the past I have bought various sets of books for my students.
The Beast and I entered the book fair. I moved slowly through the aisles, then felt my spirits lift when I found sets of The Scarlet Letter, Ethan Frome, the Phaedo, and best of all, a huge interactive book on Paris, which would make a splendid unit study in my World History and Literature classes in the fall. The book fair clerks were all extremely kind, helping me with some changes to my account and getting the boxes of books into my car.
Next stop was the Graduation Mass at Christendom College. Here I confess I did the “nod and bob” several times, for fatigue often rides the back of The Beast, but in the middle of Mass I suddenly apprehended, as if for the first time, the sublime splendor of the chants and hymns sung by the college choir. A host of angels could not have sounded more beautiful, and that music bought some peace to me.
Afterwards, the graduates and their guests gathered at the Shenandoah Valley Golf Club for a cocktail hour and supper. Surrounding the club were the valleys and rolling hills typical of this part of Virginia, all bright Irish-green from recent rains and now basking in the late afternoon glow of the sun. Inside the club, the staff and some Christendom undergraduates had artfully arranged napkins, cutlery, plates, and various glasses on the thirty tables waiting for the graduates and their guests.
As I took in the views and the carefully appointed tables, The Beast again shrank. Not much, but a little.
Because of my long association with the college—all four of my children are graduates—I knew a good number of the professors and parents in the supper crowd. Chatting with them lifted my spirits a little higher.
But it was Mary Pat and Brian who made my evening. Though I don’t know this couple well, several of their offspring have attended the college and are friends with my children. Brian is a handsome man who has apparently done well in sales, and Mary Pat is his vivacious, humorous wife who often has a devil may care glint in her eye.
Now Mary Pat came over to me and said in front of one of her daughters and my own children, “You are incredibly handsome. If Brian dies, I want you to marry me.”
I laughed, a little nervously. For one, I don’t consider myself anywhere near handsome. For another, I hardly knew Mary Pat.
“I mean it,” she said.
“I will keep that in mind.”
A few minutes later, inside the building, she said the same thing again and then went to stand at her table.
“I’m going to blow that woman a kiss,” I said suddenly. The Beast was horrified; I wasn’t supposed to have such fun. My son the graduate was also horrified, but his alarm stemmed from embarrassment.
“Don’t do—“
But by then the kiss was on its way. Mary Pat laughed aloud, blew a kiss back, and then raced around the table to me. We gave each other an enormous hug and a kiss on the cheek. Clearly accustomed to such scenes, Brian watched benignly. My son reacted by holding his face in his hands and shaking his head.
And that act of silliness was the beginning of the end, for now at least, of The Beast. Over the course of that evening, and throughout the graduation ceremony the next day, the meal that followed, and the time spent with my grandchildren on Sunday, The Beast slowly shriveled into a tiny black spot. Waking to sunshine and crisp temperatures on Monday morning, I felt more rested than I had in months. I even sang in the shower.
The wounds delivered in April have begun healing and will eventually become scars. Those I have lost this spring I will always grieve, but the darkness is gone.
Dostoevsky famously said that “Beauty will save the world,” and I see now that it was Beauty who banished The Beast. April had brought gloom, ugliness, pain, depression, and The Beast, but Beauty—the rolling, sun-lit hills, the chatter of my grandchildren, the choir of collegiate seraphim, Mary Pat’s generous humor—had broken through the portcullis of The Beast’s lair to remind me of the goodness of the world and the sweetness of the human heart.
Beauty had slain The Beast.
Rest in peace, you son of a bitch.
Like all human beings, I am sometimes beset by the blues. A week of rainy weather can induce melancholy; a small failure can bring on an evening of glum introspection; an unkind look or a sharp word can throw me into gloomy funk.
The Beast was different.
This past April was a month of death: my grandson, my dad, and a neighbor. Along with these trials came a hurricane of tests, Advanced Placement examinations, and finals in the classes I teach.
In the middle of this storm The Beast appeared. He entered into me and made himself so much at home that for days and then weeks my mind and heart felt filled with lead. Every morning I woke hopeful that my dark sorrow had vanished, but there it crouched, The Beast, staring at me. Willing away this despondency, praying it away, ignoring it: nothing worked. Finally, to take a phrase from the Old Book, I set my face like flint and simply carried on. In front of my students I concealed that flint by pasting a smile on my face, a mask to hide my troubles, but wearing that disguise only added to my burdens.
On Friday May 13th—an inauspicious date, as I dislike the number thirteen—I drove to Front Royal, Virginia, to attend the graduation festivities for my youngest son, Jeremy. Along the way I stopped near Harrisonburg, Virginia, at the Green Valley Book Fair, which consists of two warehouses jammed full of discounted books. Here in the past I have bought various sets of books for my students.
The Beast and I entered the book fair. I moved slowly through the aisles, then felt my spirits lift when I found sets of The Scarlet Letter, Ethan Frome, the Phaedo, and best of all, a huge interactive book on Paris, which would make a splendid unit study in my World History and Literature classes in the fall. The book fair clerks were all extremely kind, helping me with some changes to my account and getting the boxes of books into my car.
Next stop was the Graduation Mass at Christendom College. Here I confess I did the “nod and bob” several times, for fatigue often rides the back of The Beast, but in the middle of Mass I suddenly apprehended, as if for the first time, the sublime splendor of the chants and hymns sung by the college choir. A host of angels could not have sounded more beautiful, and that music bought some peace to me.
Afterwards, the graduates and their guests gathered at the Shenandoah Valley Golf Club for a cocktail hour and supper. Surrounding the club were the valleys and rolling hills typical of this part of Virginia, all bright Irish-green from recent rains and now basking in the late afternoon glow of the sun. Inside the club, the staff and some Christendom undergraduates had artfully arranged napkins, cutlery, plates, and various glasses on the thirty tables waiting for the graduates and their guests.
As I took in the views and the carefully appointed tables, The Beast again shrank. Not much, but a little.
Because of my long association with the college—all four of my children are graduates—I knew a good number of the professors and parents in the supper crowd. Chatting with them lifted my spirits a little higher.
But it was Mary Pat and Brian who made my evening. Though I don’t know this couple well, several of their offspring have attended the college and are friends with my children. Brian is a handsome man who has apparently done well in sales, and Mary Pat is his vivacious, humorous wife who often has a devil may care glint in her eye.
Now Mary Pat came over to me and said in front of one of her daughters and my own children, “You are incredibly handsome. If Brian dies, I want you to marry me.”
I laughed, a little nervously. For one, I don’t consider myself anywhere near handsome. For another, I hardly knew Mary Pat.
“I mean it,” she said.
“I will keep that in mind.”
A few minutes later, inside the building, she said the same thing again and then went to stand at her table.
“I’m going to blow that woman a kiss,” I said suddenly. The Beast was horrified; I wasn’t supposed to have such fun. My son the graduate was also horrified, but his alarm stemmed from embarrassment.
“Don’t do—“
But by then the kiss was on its way. Mary Pat laughed aloud, blew a kiss back, and then raced around the table to me. We gave each other an enormous hug and a kiss on the cheek. Clearly accustomed to such scenes, Brian watched benignly. My son reacted by holding his face in his hands and shaking his head.
And that act of silliness was the beginning of the end, for now at least, of The Beast. Over the course of that evening, and throughout the graduation ceremony the next day, the meal that followed, and the time spent with my grandchildren on Sunday, The Beast slowly shriveled into a tiny black spot. Waking to sunshine and crisp temperatures on Monday morning, I felt more rested than I had in months. I even sang in the shower.
The wounds delivered in April have begun healing and will eventually become scars. Those I have lost this spring I will always grieve, but the darkness is gone.
Dostoevsky famously said that “Beauty will save the world,” and I see now that it was Beauty who banished The Beast. April had brought gloom, ugliness, pain, depression, and The Beast, but Beauty—the rolling, sun-lit hills, the chatter of my grandchildren, the choir of collegiate seraphim, Mary Pat’s generous humor—had broken through the portcullis of The Beast’s lair to remind me of the goodness of the world and the sweetness of the human heart.
Beauty had slain The Beast.
Rest in peace, you son of a bitch.
RSS Feed