Melancholia: “a mental condition marked by persistent depression and ill-founded fears.” I remember as a young girl, (that awkward age between dreaming of Prince Charming and desires her mother did not understand), my English teacher taught us to begin our explanatory essays with a quote from a well-known personage or a definition from Samuel Webster’s dictionary. Neither made sense.
I realize now my teacher looked upon us with no hope. Hope that we would be pliable and learn what the hell she wanted us to know. Actual questions need not apply. I don’t think she resented us, but she didn’t pity us either. Perhaps that judgment is rash but tell me, is finding a quote that fits our needs a bomb under the table? Or was she wanting us to fit our experience into a narrative she could handle? Was she diabolical or laying bread crumbs?
All that to say I wrote the essay with a definition rather than a quote. I would much rather feel the solid ground of a definition under my busy pen than the undulating and back biting risk of some quote that could turn upon me at any moment. Imagine any well-intended atheist using the book of Job as a pretext for the proof that God doesn’t exist. The intention may seem plausible but, “I shall follow Him though he slay me,” may leave more for the other side of the question, such as what happened to self-vindicating Job?
I have age spots on my hands now and I’ve come so far away from writing essays I forgot my teacher’s name; Mrs. Something. However, she left me with a standard that I keep to this day and one of which it would shock her to know. I have no use in this life for any other dictionary than that of Webster’s Dictionary, and at that it must be Samuel’s and not some infiltrated, compensating tome of a book that neuters the language away from its sharp and cold truthfulness.
Melancholia is an old word and one attributed to women of the late 18th and throughout the 19th century as we attribute ADHD to young boys today. Perhaps in less than a century we will have university and college scholars writing scads of literature and scholarly dissertations about the confining and debilitating way we treated a generation of young boys, just as we do now regarding the treatment of women a century ago. But now we chalk up our fast-paced actions against the word ‘coincidence.’ Perhaps someday the word coincidence will be considered as vile as the word fuck.
So I sit down to my now obsolete typewriter and tap away, repeating the word, ‘melancholia.’ There is no greater joy than onion paper embossed with words. The clack of the typewriter, the ding at the end of the line, the curl of the paper, the sound of the rollers as I pull out the paper and place it aside.
I stopped writing for a while, so I had to find something to do. I walked around this empty little house and thought, what is missing, what is wrong? You would not believe the repairmen I had here checking the wiring, checking the plumbing, checking the foundation for people eating bugs. Nothing, the house was as sound as a brick.
Then it hit me, the clatter of my typewriter was what I missed. By the time I figured it out, the ribbon was dry and a layer of dust covered the poor little machine. I worked for days to get it in perfect working order and now tap away, waiting for more than one word to spew out of the end of my fingers, but nothing comes except “melancholia.” I wonder how Oscar Wilde wrote such a truthful novel like “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” If I were the novel’s author the pages would have been filled with the exact word melancholia and I would have saved the world from the concept of story. Here I cackle like a witch to keep evil spirits away.
I keep the noose in the corner of my room and watch it sway all night long over my tiny typewriter.
Do you think I’ll haunt when I’m done writing?
