Through a glass darkly

A bright, warm, sunny day in Seattle. After a week or so of gray skies and cool days, summer finally returns -- temperatures in the 80's, birds chirping, voices of kids playing in the streets.

But, as that philosopher Buddy Holly once said, "it's raining, raining in my heart."

I'm afflicted with a summer cold. It came on gradually, tickle by tickle in the back of my throat. I ignored it. It would not be ignored; it insisted. By Sunday, I'd stopped doing anything productive. I sat and stared into space. I gazed at my unengaging Facebook screen. I picked at my piano keys. I went to YouTube for musical inspiration and fell asleep listening to Horowitz. I couldn't stay awake during the day; I couldn't stay asleep at night.

Yesterday was worse, today not much better.

Telling folks you have a cold earns you no respect, no sympathy. Why would it? When I was nine or ten, I had a cold most days of the year. So what? Life was to be lived. Now, I get a cold maybe twice a year, and the experience undoes me. Whenever it gets near me, the wuss-o-meter goes off the scale.

No matter how beautiful the day outside, no matter how moving the music I hear and attempt to play, no matter what exciting events I see beckoning in the future -- with a cold, everything's in black and white. Or, more accurately, gray. A cold leaves you alive to limp through daily life, but drains all of the joy and all of the beauty out of the experience. If love provides us intimations of immortality, a cold offers sober insights into the flat, cold world of clinical depression.

But, as many webpages have advised me over the past day or so, the worst symptoms of a cold generally are over within three days. I should be about there. Do I see a bit of color at the end of the tunnel? -- like viewing Oz from the gloomy depths of a Kansas tornado?

I'm not sure. Who cares? I'll get there when I get there.

One further observation: clinical depression (The Bell Jar notwithstanding) generally doesn't cause one to churn out gripping and memorable writing.

Neither does the common cold. And I guess that's all I got to say. So yeah.