A Broader Bandwidth

FOR OVER A WEEK, I have been feeling the sort of buzzing in my head that comes from a thought circling and circling with nowhere to go; just like a bee in a jar.

I distinctly remember reading somewhere, a blog entry on feeling melancholic..... . Whereupon, I let loose my little cursor, my insect prosthesis, buzzing around the web to gather bits of information. But when I returned, that whimsy post had vanished.

Then, in the wake of two death watches and with no place to go, I decided to set the restless bee free in The Cruelest Month. Despite a shot of optimism, the bee stayed. Six entries later, it remained there, like a plane on a runway not knowing it’d been cleared for takeoff. It crawled on the stalk legs around the curved perimeters of the glass as if the world had shrunk to that jar. I tapped the glass, even laid the jar on its side. Cheeky butts, shake-your-booty, jiggle your tummy, that crazy bee stayed put. The buzzing persisted. By now, it’s no longer that one bee, there is a whole swarm of them.

ALRITE, BUZZzzz OFF, YOU LOT!

:) ;P :D ~_~ ... and, here we go...

Snowflakes are miracles of beauty. Every crystal is a masterpiece of design and no one design is ever repeated. Everyone, like a snowflake, is unique. Or as Byron put it, "differently organized". "We each move within the constraints of our temperaments and live up only partially to its possibilities." says Dr Kay Redfield Jamison.

Melancholy is an aspect of a lifelong emotional disposition. The melancholic has a broader bandwith than the average person; a curse and sometimes a blessing. He (generic he) has a temperament that longs for heaven so that life on this earth always will be a disappointment. He has more accurate view of the world around him, than one who has a sunnier temperament.

He experiences things intensely, he feels acutely. He sees beauty in more things. Yet, when faced with any given challenge, he tends to go to his emotional default setting. His mystical and melancholic mood notices the world in poignant detail, and only hints at personal torments.

If I could explain

at length

the real causes

which have contributed

to increase

this perhaps

natural

temperament of mine

this Melancholy

which hath made me a by-word

nobody would wonder

but this is impossible without doing much mischief

~The Tempest~

It is melancholics who know best how to read the world. Or rather, it is the world that yields itself to the melancholic’s scrutiny, as it does to no one else's.

"There is melancholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass", mourned award-winning American journalist, Charles Kuralt.

Well, as Eliot so astutely observed: “after such knowledge, what forgiveness?."

I have a friend who was a crazy bee. He stayed put in a marriage and even when his jar was tapped, he didn’t leave. He had to wait until the time was right for him, just as that bee was doing, for eventually, it will leave its captivity and roam free. Sometimes, the door is open wide, and we just buzz about, bounce into the glass walls around us, and wonder how we might reach the other side without stepping foot outside our comfort zone.

Your default position grows out of who you are and how you think. When we are so tied up in negative patterns we may be strengthening our negative emotions without knowing we are doing so. When we are unaware, when we are sad, depressed, or unhappy, we are like bees trapped in a jar. They buzz around in restless patterns, with no way of escape. Yet we are not completely trapped. Our emotional problems and negative attitudes are in one way part of our learning process.

I personally find it more instructive to hear about life and living from such brilliant but wounded souls, than from those rise-and-shine types who eat properly, exercise regularly and go to bed early. When you are feeling miserable, the latter lot can only add to your misery when, with the best of intentions, they tell you to "snap out of it".