Mock the midnight bell

At work we once again took the kids trick or treating up the street. I did not rain, unlike last year (what a debacle that was). We stopped in at all the shops, and the employees oohed and ahhed over the kids in their costumes and gave them candy, and I took pictures. It does touch my heart to see how enthusiastic and happy kids are at Halloween; it reminds me that innocence and joy do have a place in this world somewhere.

After work and a brief nap, I drove up to State School. As I was waiting in the Halloween night traffic I got rear-ended on the way by some daffy old lady driving an expensive car. It was a fairly gentle bump, so I just took down her phone number and drove on. No need to report the idiot. She told me she was talking on her cell phone. What a world we live in. Looking back, I think she may have been a trifle tipsy.

I got all the way up to State School only to find a sign on the door saying that class was cancelled. Lame. There was no email notification sent, but then I hadn't checked my email anyway. Back in February when this happened, they very courteously called me at home to tell me; someone may have done that this time as well, but I haven't had my land line plugged in for months, so I wouldn't know. I only have a land line for DSL; I neither take nor make calls on it.

So I drove down to the Hangout, stopping briefly at work to pick up my camera, which I accidentally had left there. It's nice to have a key. I met Friar at the old watering hole, and we played a little video golf and ate bad fried food and drank. A Beatles cover band played. I'm not even a big fan of the real Beatles; the cover band was just kind of blah. Mr. Hangout wasn't too pleased with them, either. After a while, Friar and I went out to get something real to eat. We tried two places, including Cheesefries, but they were both closed. So we did something we haven't done in years and years. We went to --- gag --- Denny's. That got us reminiscing about our high school days, when our whole group would stay at Denny's nearly all night, acting like fools , drinking coffee and making a big mess ("I bet you can't hit the ceiling fan with this creamer by catapulting it off the handle of this spoon"). Good times, literally two decades back now. I'm so old and useless.

October is traditionally my most depressed month. A lot of seriously bad shit in my life has happened in October. It may be related to the cold weather and dark days, too, I don't know.

I may be starting the Prozac again. I've actually thought seriously about contacting a suicide prevention center. I'm not thinking seriously of offing myself, though, at least not for the time being. I've been trying to use my much-vaunted cranium and applying the problem of my depression to rational thought. It seems to me that if your life isn't making you happy, instead of ending it, the sensible thing to try first is to change it. So that's what I'm going to do.

And with that, this blog goes dark, at least for a month and perhaps longer. Detailing my spiral of failures and recriminations has not been helping me --- not that I ever thought it would, not that such was the "intent" of this blog, not that this blog ever had anything as concrete as an "intent." But the fact remains that this kind of electronic lexical catharsis has only depressed me; reading the archives is for me like watching a badly written and badly acted Shakespeare tragedy adaptation going in (painfully) slow motion.

So a break for November, then. And, inshallah, if I feel fine about it then, maybe longer. But I guess I probably will start up again next year, if only to document my tortuous path to public school certification. which reminds me, cutting out now means that I won't be able to record how the last of this semester went! Well, it's not like it's the outcome is exactly Hitchcockian in suspense. Let's just assume I'll get a trio of aces.

So anyhow, to my three faithful readers, Samurai Frog, NYC Educator, and Janet, thank you for your comments and links. I don't comment on your own terrific blogs as often as I'd like, but I do read and appreciate every post. See you in this space sometime later.

Locked in a room
Waiting til kingdom come
Although I felt elated
I felt like I was scum
I was carried away
Caught up in an affray

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

O death in life, the days that are no more.

The gale, it piles the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

Shantih shantih shantih