“the lacuna,” barbara kingsolver

Two characters are discussing nationality and history.  Americans love being told about how they have slipped the noose of history, that their story is something beyond that of their forefathers; Mexicans are rooted in history as the foundation of the world.  On the Day of the Dead:

“People love it, as much as they love a wedding.  Really it is a kind of wedding, to the people in your past.  You take a vow they’re all still with you.  You cook a feast and bring enough food for the dead people too.”

I was in a vulnerable moment and that line blinded me momentarily.  We are married to our past.  Maybe more accurately, widowed – a bond that lasts but can be superceded, and is, because we are betrothed to the future.  It is an arranged marriage.  We will meet it for the first time tomorrow, our wedding day.  I know that I am stretching this metaphor to its utmost limit.  But it’s been haunting me.

articulation

Maddow suffers, she says, from “cyclical” depression. “One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don’t think I’ll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I’m not depressed and I’m on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me – not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.”

From “Rachel Maddow’s Quiet War,” Ben Wallace-Wells