December 5, 2007 – Perspective comes in all kinds of ways. Here I was, pondering C.S. Lewis and “The Problem of Pain,” and ready to confess to something so many of the readers of this blog already know, when Lenore, my Lab puppy, hopped off of the sofa and began  circling. Before I could even open my mouth, she dropped a staggering load for a small thing.
   I got up – no point in scolding her after the fact and got some Odor Off, some spray disinfectant, some paper towels and a plastic bag. While doing that, she took another dump, then, as I stood dumbstruck, yet a third. I could hardly believe what was coming out of this little dog. Rose and Izzy, disgusted, left the room,  and then I remembered Lenore had spent the day at Annie’s, where there are 11 goats. I called Annie, outraged, and she laughed. “Yeah,” she said, “she had a good time out in the goat pen.” Lab Love. No more days at Annie’s.
   This sort of things brings one down to earth, shapes perspective, focuses reality, and odd as it seems, makes you feel good. If you love Labs, you will love Odor Off, and somehow, accepting this brings you closer to the rythyms of life, and eases its burdens.

 –

  It’s odd being me, I guess. When you write books, and then have a blog, and then post to the blog every day, it seems natural, almost unthinking, to share your thoughts and life. But people who follow the blog, and there are now many all over the place, and who read my books, know me sometimes better than I know myself. I get e-mail all the time telling me how I’m feeling, and I am always a bit shocked to realize how true these observations are.
  Lately, I have been getting all sorts of e-mail from people following my writings, people who are concerned about me.
   When Heather, a border collie lover and passionate and compulsive arguer, and a longtime critic of my writing about dogs, who has thrashed me repeatedly in many forums, notices I am down and is concerned about it, you know you are sending a message out that everyone can see, even if you are not aware you are sending it.
   Every day lately, there are e-mails and messages on my answering machine, saying things like “Jon, just checking in. Read your blog. You seem a little down.”  My great friend Mary Kellogg the poet left a message today saying she had read my post about friendship and one about loss, and was “just thinking about you.” If you know Mary, and her subtle but perceptive grace, you can translate such a message: “Jon, you seem depressed. What is wrong with you?” And, of course, “I am with you.”
  June from Honolulu e-mailed me this morning, and said, “Hey, I’ve been reading your posts and loving them, but you do sound down, not your usual chipper and joyous self.” And I don’t know June. Or do I?

  So, ok, ok, if you’re going to open your life to people and write books and blog, you can’t be coy. No point, really. Robertson Davies, my favorite writer of all time, I think, wrote about the times when “The Black Dog” came to visit him, and stayed for awhile. He meant this is when he was depressed and a black mood would come over him. The black dog would stay for days, weeks, Davies wrote, and he would live in the shadows with him.
   I have a real black dog, and she is dumping all over the house, but I think Lenore is incapable of spreading gloom.

  But I have come to realize, long after many of my readers, that I have been visited by the real Black Dog, and have been depressed. I’m not sure when it began. Couple of months ago, I think, but it crept up on me, and I didn’t get it.
  I hate November, the gloomiest month of the year. I remember being exhausted a couple of months ago, sliding into a deep funk, feeling a bit disconnected from the place. I remember taking pictures held me up, talking to Paula, my other friends.
  I remember my friend Anthony having a rough time, another friend dying suddenly in a car crash, missing Paula and Emma, who are most often in New York. I have suffered some loss, and it hurts.
   I am also discouraged by the plight of three of my friends who are having trouble, only one of whom I can help. I hate it when I can’t help my friends, but sometimes you just can’t.
   So I guess I have been struggling with my own Black Dog, and ought to own up to it, since it is obvious to everyone but me anyway. Paula knows it, of course. Emma has been suddenly calling me up at odd hours asking how I’m doing. Maria has been a great friend, talking to me as often as she can, keeping an eye on me. My friend Becky, who has experienced loss and pain, understands it as well as anyone, and she is religious and leans on her faith.
   My friend Brian McLendon in New York told me on the phone this morning, “your life up there isn’t as easy as it looks, is it?” No, not.
  Annie spotted it, and has been gently prodding me to cheer up, hang around more with the cows of donkeys, Annie’s solution to most of life’s ills. But its not a bad idea. I haven’t brought Elvis an apple in weeks, and haven’t been visiting the donkeys as often as I ought. They are great communers.
 And then there’s hospice. Izzy and I have been to see Etta nearly every in the nursing home, and she is failing rapidly. We are perhaps closer to her than any other hospice patient yet, and this one will go deeper, perhaps. She is losing her twinkle, her laugh.
  I realized today I haven’t even taken the sheep out in weeks with Rose. Of course, with ice on the ground and the temperature below zero, there’s probably not much grazing to do.

–

  So Lenore is dozing at my feet, the place is clean. Back to C.S. Lewis. He is better to read when you are feeling depressed than Thomas Merton, who had little sympathy for brooding, and would probably have gone out alone into the woods in a hairshirt to pray in the cold. Lewis is a bit easier, more reflective, doing his brooding in some book-lined British study, I suspect.
  Of all evils, he wrote, pain only is sterilized or disinfected evil. Pain has no tendency, in its own right, to proliferate.
   When it is over, it is over, and the natural sequel is joy.
   I have lived long enough to know that joy and relief follow depression and sadness, and that is something to look forward to. When I told Paula last night that pain and trouble are a gift, she told me I was out of my mind. Paula is a New Yorker, and Merton and a contemplative approach are not big down there. Everyone is in one kind of pain or another, loudly and continuously. When you experience pain you suck it up, and if that doesn’t work, get to a therapist and take a pill.
  Up here, on the farm, my funks are organic, living things, and they can roll on for sometime before anybody even notices, at least me. They have to live natural life. Because there is pain and sadness in life, and if you don’t know and expect that, life will be a continuous shock and disappointment.
  Pain, once over, requires no undoing. It is gone, and biologists say humans can’t recall pain once it has passed, a part of the body’s defense mechanism against too much suffering.
  I insist that these things are a gift. I told Paula I had been doing a lot of things, too many things perhaps, some of them causing me pain and all of them together leading to a deflation of the spirit and the Black Dog. But I said I had no regrets. I wouldn’t want a life free from depression, pain and risk.
  I wouldn’t want a life where I didn’t try things, challenge myself, learn and grow and feel, suffer even. I will be thinking about this, and coping with it, and turning to friends who care about me, and expanding my consciousness in one way or another. I will be better, and better for it
  And that is the gift part. Depression, like pain itself, is life itself and without it, I would not be able to look forward to the joy of recovery, of being lifted up, of drawing again from people, the farm, my work, the animals and life here.
  The Christian, Muslim and Jewish doctrine of suffering all offer a curious fact about the world we live in. We all desire a kind of settled happiness and security but many believe in a God who withholds that from us by the very nature of the world we live in.
  Life, nature, health, other people, work, politicians, often do not cooperate with our desire to live free of pain and sadness and in security.
  I would love to not be depressed, and I know that one day soon I will not be. I will not permit myself to be. The world around me will not permit to be. Lenore will not allow me to be. Rose will not tolerate it when there is so much to do. And I will get sick of myself, and tired of me, and move on.
–
    But I also know that depression, like pain, is part of the nature of the world. We are refreshed on our journey by moments of love, friendship, a landscape, music, a good movie or book, a special meal, a great dog, even a donkey, or, in my case, friends, a good blog and writing.
    I don’t mistake those moments for home, or for life itself.
     Nobody wants to be sad, to feel that tightness in the chest, the dull ache in the heart, that loneliness that wraps itself like a shroud, and is impervious to almost anything but time.
  And without them, life would be happier, but shallower, less meaningful, and oddly poorer.
  So yes, it is strange being me, but I like being me.  I am down. I am onto it, and dealing with it. The fact that so many of you noticed and wrote to me is humbling, wonderful, part of what I mean about the gift of pain. That and the fact that I will return to the world refreshed and energized, filling the holes up with other things. Paying attention to things I have neglected. Finding new things.
   How touching that it took those messages to awaken me to my own self (you, too, Frank), and how lucky I am. And how obliged to be honest in return. It is embarrassing to feel loss, to hurt. And not my nature to do it in public. But my life and this blog have changed my nature and, if you want to keep your feelings to yourself, don’t blog.
  And now, I see Lenore rising, and I am out of Odor Off. I’ll keep you posted.