Sunt Lacrima Rerum -- Always in Season

Three times in the past three weeks. On Monday, it was around "sixteen-one thousand" in my litany, standing on one leg in front of the cop car; my car in the ditch, eleven below zero. The day before, it was seeing Tom and Jeanie's movie for the first time since Lucas died. A couple weeks before that, it was being unable to remember a friend's phone number as I continued in the downward spiral now thankfully reversed.

Sunt lacrima rerum, says Vergil. Literally, "There are tears for things." As humans, with human experiences we have tears.

I find myself seasonal like the Nile in this. At times, I don't cry for months on end. Other times, I cry nonstop. At the treatment centers this summer it got to be embarrassing at times--I'd say my goal for the day was not to cry, and would be crying twenty minutes later. But until these past few weeks, I hadn't cried since getting out of treatment.

I accept my small bouts of weeping with gratitude, an opportunity to allow some balance in the water table. Laughter's similarly seasonal. Lately, I've found myself laughing more, where it had stopped pretty much entirely. I welcome small bouts of laughter. Why not laugh a little, weep a little, every day? Why can't the grace of being moved by life be an everyday nourishment?

As a writer, I wish to make myself laugh and cry every day as I engage with the wonder of the universe. To make others laugh and cry also. If I can't find it within myself, I can read and watch movies to educate me and make up the deficit as I laugh and cry (I am so far deficient in film education, and am grateful every time I watch a single film to fill the gap a little).

The obvious metaphor: I have gone from habitually eating almost nothing to eating everything I could hold and more, for an ultimatum. One whole week later, the barren season beckons with siren song; the complications of appetite strike fear. Why can't daily nourishment be part of a full life, like tears and laughter, and the ecstatic connectedness to which they are a response?

Tears, laughter, adequate and appropriate sustenance. May they always be in season.