Depression comes over you suddenly like a wave. Just when you least expect it. There is the weather, of course, the constant hey-ho of the wind and the rain. There is the change in the clocks which means that the dark is threatening at tea-time. There is the loneliness which is somehow exaggerated by the lack of communication with the one you care for. There is the phone that never rings and the silent doorbell. A vivid memory from a visit during my teenage years to Kibbutz Kfar HaNassi. I trip to a beach in the Galil where there was a bonfire and songs, much ru’ach or spirit amongst friends and a dip in the cool waters. I nearly drowned, an unexpected wave or drawback pulled me out and under. I was tossed around and thought I would not survive, pulled this way and that helplessly. A desperate holding of breath and a feeling of fate overtaking will. That is what the wave of depression feels like now. But there is one difference: then I wanted with desperation to surface for air, back into the breathing world, now I am not so sure but that I would rather submit to the currents and let them pull me down into a welcome oblivion. Even the weather seems to understand. There is a depression over the Atlantic, the clocks have gone back. And it rains and blows. It is as if the elements understand and beat against the heart relentlessly. And it is often quite suicidal. If she takes your hand and laughs one of her inconsequential laughs which give meaninglessness a new meaning, the whole envelope of life that you are suffering is there in a loss beyond all losses, a gulf of separation which you dare not state into for you know and did Nietzsche, that it would stare back at you. It‘s the Sunday before Christmas and, indeed the house is as quiet as a mouse as a lot of the help has christmassed away: the Day Centre is closed in the afternoon and all day tomorrow and over the New Year so we have been together as a couple more than usual. Our little walk up to Beluso to have a coffee is also out of the question as the café is closed for the duration although the weather is unseasonably good. It is these days when she stays with me that are both harder and easier than the others when I leave her at the door of the Day Centre which I hate. The pretence at a kind of normality makes the abnormality of it all the more striking. There is a helplessness and poverty of spirit. Lots of washing and ironing as there is much soiling of linen and it is not possible to settle down to anything other than watch the hours click by: a bit of telly, food and a bit more telly till bedtime. These little blogs are all that I am writing now. They say that suffering makes for good poetry and that death is a good career move. Well, I am not so sure as real depression cut off the juices at source and leaves you literally soul-less – des-animado – without animation. I don’t see this state of affairs ending any time soon.

loss has its chemistry also

as elements transmute

into the almost silence of slow breathing

haunts the present of

the hanging thread between

dreams and the bustle of necessities

the axle returning to some hub

of secrets barely shadowed

in the returning womb

the sound of distance in deaf ears

from your internal seas

where what remains of strength

                       perhaps

           resides

and hope still rises easy

as mackerel to the line

that needs an introspection

back down the waters

to the arterial heart

of what you were

and now no longer fear

This from bedbound