A lifetime of melancholy part two: how it feels

When your thoughts and faith and expectations are floating about, groundless and buoyant in the sky, and then get popped like a plucked balloon. When you think you're safe in the out zone, but a playground ball hits you in the face, knocks your jaw, sucks your wind, and leaves tracks. Like an anxious tick, like worrying a hangnail, like an old and suffering hip. Like not getting to drive or even ride shotgun; as usual, you're relegated to the back, forced to to stare wistfully out the window, tracking yellow lines in pavement, just along for the ride.

A lifetime of melancholy part one: a recipe for disaster

There are surefire ways to fall into a numb despair.

The ingredients are always within reach. A bit of not asking for what you want, a dash of not doing all you can. Two tablespoons of bad luck. Large handfuls of laziness and denial. Sprinkle with complacency and mix together in a large pot filled with obligations and you will have a shit soup, a broth of misery you'll drink every day for a very long and lonely winter.

A lifetime of melancholy part one: a recipe for disaster

There are surefire ways to fall into a numb despair. The ingredients are always within reach: a bit of not asking for what you want, a dash of not doing all you can. Two tablespoons of bad luck. Large handfuls of laziness and denial. Sprinkle with complacency and mix together in a large pot filled with obligations and you will have a shit soup, a broth of misery you'll drink every day for a very long and lonely winter.

A lifetime of melancholy part two: how it feels

When your thoughts and faith and expectations are floating about, groundless and buoyant in the sky, and then get popped like a plucked balloon. When you think you're safe in the out zone, but a playground ball hits you in the face, knocks your jaw, sucks your wind, and leaves tracks. Like an anxious tick, like worrying a hangnail, like an old and suffering hip. Like not getting to drive or even ride shotgun; as usual, you're relegated to the back, forced to to stare wistfully out the window, tracking yellow lines in pavement, just along for the ride.