{"id":4874,"date":"2010-01-20T21:44:01","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T02:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=4874"},"modified":"2010-01-20T21:44:01","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T02:44:01","slug":"reprieve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/reprieve","title":{"rendered":"Reprieve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, dear readers, your Virtual Memoirist has a confession to make: I’ve been in denial about how badly my pal Sang’s death has affected me and I belatedly realized that I am in the midst of depression. I’ve been chalking up my symptoms to some other cause, as if there’s some clearer\u00c2\u00a0 reason that I’ve been emotionally flat, unable to craft a sentence, sullen, and physically cold for the past two weeks. The world itself has felt like it’s at arm’s length. If it weren’t for Amy’s love, I think I’d have drifted away.<\/p>\n

I don’t know when I’m going to write another post. I’m trying to get myself writing, but everything I’ve tried has come out lifeless. It’s all just a collection of mundane events, with no magic, no song. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and I’ll just feel right again. Maybe I unburdened myself a little when I cried to my wife this evening. Maybe I need to cry more. I really can’t tell. I’m 39 years old and barely know myself sometimes. I honestly didn’t attribute all this to the most obvious cause there is. I feel like I’m in a mist.<\/p>\n

I took Tuesday off and went to the city to visit the Morgan Library and Museum<\/a> and have lunch with a pal. I added some more stops after that, and managed to turn everything into a race; I had to get back to the car by a certain time, to try to miss the traffic and get home in time to take care of the dogs. In my heart, I knew that I’d created that compressed timetable deliberately, because I wanted to worry about the immediacy of something, to be in a race. I was creating anxiety because I didn’t want to address the angst that’s been lurking since Sang’s death.<\/p>\n

I got almost nothing out of the Morgan; it was a limited exhibition space, but I still flattened out the experience almost to nil. My only moment of joy was when I discovered that JP’s old library contained a 1595 edition of Montaigne’s Essais<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lunch with my friend was better, because he’s known me so long, but I fear that I was somehow absent in that conversation; rather, the part of me that’s beset by grief was absent. And without that, what’s left?<\/p>\n

So you may be getting a reprieve from this heap of broken images while I try to feel what I’m feeling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, dear readers, your Virtual Memoirist has a confession to make: I’ve been in denial about how badly my pal Sang’s death has affected me and I belatedly realized that I am in the midst of depression. I’ve been chalking up my symptoms to some other cause, as if there’s some clearer\u00c2\u00a0 reason that I’ve … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Reprieve”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4C7K-reprieve","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4875,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4874\/revisions\/4875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}