Drizzly November In My Soul

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.- MD

You have to love a line like "drizzly November in my soul." Who hasn't felt like this at times? Depressed, hostile, generally pissed off. Melville has fun with it here, but you recognize an authenticity of emotion. Seldom has despondency been so entertainingly, succinctly portrayed.

It made me think of how we're awash in TV ads hawking remedies for depression or anxiety in the shadow of the Great Recession. How many ill-tempered, job-hungry Ishmaels out there even now holding cardboard signs on street corners, or holed up in cheap rentals or sleeping on the cramped, musty couches of family or friends? And then there are those not exiled from the workforce still afraid, stressed, alienated in mostly empty offices, suffering an internalized exile of the soul.

Me, I think of the Badlands of the insomnia, going interminable stretches of getting two to four hours of sleep each night. At times I've taken half a blue pill to cope yet wondered if I wouldn't be better served seeking to ship elsewhere, facing treacherous gray swells instead. 

My world seems so narrow by comparison with Ishmael's that I wonder if it's me or if we have, as a global tribe, lost certain critical competencies in the 21st century. Perhaps whole continents would still lay wild and undiscovered had our ancestors only had Prozac and been succored by screens and tubes.

Illustration from a 19th century book on Physiognomy: on left is "Utter despair" and on right is "Rage mixed with fear"