Yesterday I heard an amazing singer, Rosena Hill, at Unity of NY. She sang some gospel spirituals acapella that were so soulful, everyone in the audience was blown away. Then she sang "The Impossible Dream" and killed us and then later on, the choir came out and she sang with them and I couldn't believe what a gift it was to be sitting in that audience and listening to that music. I was so uplifted the rest of the day - I went shopping at Zabar's and then my loft mate, Abigail and I tried out a great hamburger place in the East Village and talked to the owner, who was divorced but still pretty angry after fifteen years. Fortunately, she makes excellent burgers.
Then later at night, a feeling of doom and gloom came over me. Divorce blues, fears of earthquakes on the west coast where my daughter lives, sadness about Chile, Haiti, the Congo. I don't know where it came from - Sunday nights can be difficult. I thought about kissing and having fun and that cheered me up a bit -- and then I did what I usually do when I'm having a soul struggle - I made a few calls, did a little reading, wrote, watched some mindless TV (last night it was the closing ceremonies of the Olympics) and then took a half a Klonipin and went to sleep...or passed out really.
When I woke up this morning, I took the dogs out for a walk and brought my ipod. Two songs randomly came on. One is a song that Zoe and I used to dance to when she was little - "I get knocked down but I get up again" - by Chumbawamba. And it made me laugh and dance a little on the street. And then a few minutes laters, Carly Simon's "Coming Around Again" came on and that also lifted my spirits. I had an email from a friend who reminded me how far I've come in the past six months or so...it's always hard to see that in yourself, but I think it's true.
I read a long article in yesterday's NY Times about depression, which I agreed with - depression is part of life, sadness is not to be medicated away (unless it's completely debilitating) and I went to the gym and ran three miles in 35 minutes - a personal best since I started running last month. And then suddenly, I was back on track, back to living in the moment, back to feeling optimistic and also with lots of ideas for the book that Abigail and I've been thinking about writing together.
So thank you Rosena, Chumbawamba, Carly, treadmill, hamburgers, hamburger lady, dear friends; I pray for Chile and Haiti and everywhere else in the world and here's "Coming Around Again."
3 comments:
This sounds ridiculous, but the song that always cheers me up (and did even during the depths of chemo) is "You Had a Bad Day." Try it, maybe you'll like it. Why don't I ever run into you at the gym?
I love that song, but when I went onto I tunes it didn't show up...Oh, I'll google it and find out the artist. I remember it from American Idol.
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