Melancholic catharsis

Waking up from restless sleep, from dreams that I know were strange but which I can’t quite remember fully when consciousness sets in – these are things that I find disquieting. I lie hapless in bed, trying desperately to recall where my mind went to during those hours of heavy slumber, to no avail. I can only recall momentary images, snatches of sensation. They’re like wisps of smoke that tantalize my brain, making me feel a tad melancholic.

What to do when melancholia sets in? Why, feed it, of course! Sometimes I find that giving in to it, giving it free rein and not suppressing it can be comforting. Listening to sad music, watching a sad movie, reading bleak poetry – these can be cathartic for me.

Take this poem, for example, from one of my favorite poets, Anne Sexton (she committed suicide, by the way. Isn’t that depressing?)

HER KIND

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Listening to poets like the suicidal Anne reading their own poetry aloud is even better. There’s something seductive about the experience of knowing that the words I’m hearing are being uttered by the very same person whose mind gave birth to them. If you feel like it, you can go to the poets.org site and hear some of the other poems that I like to listen to from time to time – read aloud by the authors themselves. There’s Thom Gunn reading his Death’s Door, Dylan Thomas reading his Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Robert Frost reading his The Road Not Taken, and several others.

Odd how voices of melancholy can be so soothing.