The Black Dog

I have found a name for my pain. (No, it’s not Batman.)

In the past few weeks, I have been extremely distracted by the move to the Undisclosed Location and all the jarring and uprooting and just plain hard work that entailed. But there’s been another issue, an elephant in the room I didn’t want to acknowledge, partly because I couldn’t describe it.

As usual, I fall back on the words of those more educated or who simply write better than I can. One such is The Diplomad, who came up with that name.

Apologies for the light blogging these past few days. Having one of those periodic visits by what Churchill and others have called the “black dog.” A little one, mind you, but nevertheless it interferes with my ability to engage in witty repartee of the blog-type. Let me explain. I am not talking about some clinical depression. I am talking about the black dog that bites you when you read the news, and see and hear the politicians–Democrat and Republican, American and foreign–prattle on about anything and everything except the facts. There are so many facts out there the size of elephants or at least the size of CTU President Karen Lewis, yet the world’s politicians manage not to see them and to see, instead, what they believe in.

Black Dog. Yes, I’ve been bitten by that fellow as well. It’s hard not to look at what is going on in our country today and not feel just a touch of, if not despair, then a strong sense of foreboding.

I spent the last sixty-odd days working side by side with folks you would call the “salt of the earth”-  the people who fix things, make things, make things happen in the background that is never seen unless it stops working. The folks who keep society functioning. The one universal thread I saw was a sense of “preparing”, a quiet withdrawal back to the near and dear, a vibe you only feel when something like a big hurricane is coming- it’s big, it’s inevitable, and it may tear your life apart, but you ready yourself as best as you can.

I think I know what it is, and am afraid of the knowing, so I turn from the macro to the micro and just get on with things. Now is a time for casting aside the trivial and unimportant and shoring up that which really matters, for a storm is coming and none of us knows what it will bring.

The Black Dog. I like that. It fits.