melancholy and the man in 8A

The Man in 8A
Originally uploaded by Ingrid!

I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life.

I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations.

Adapted by the Chronicle Review from Eric G. Wilson's In Praise of Melancholy.

I clipped this earlier this morning but didn't know how to illustrate it or comment on it, so I shelved it.

Then PT Power tweeted about Ingrid!'s post re the Man in 8A.

I still don't know how to comment on it but I'm putting it out here because I find myself wrestling with a tangle of emotions -- as the presidential campaign unfolds, as I come to terms with my Grandmother's Alzheimer's and the fact that she's gone now, really, even though she's still here on this earth.

I'm trying to "hold it," as a friend advised me to, "like you would a sore toe."

To honor these feelings. To know that they're true.