My best friend Richard, who I’ve talked about previously, bought me a copy of the Tom Robbins novel “Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates”, ages ago. Richard has endless patience for my mood-swings and bouts of depression, and I know that while he finds it hard to understand the mindset, he will always be there to cheer me up, in any way he can.
In fact all my friends and loved ones:
- Kate (who really doesn’t need my crap, yet still drops everything to help me);
- her husband Alan (who wants me to chill and get a laid-back frame of mind);
- Colin (who sits me down and tells me how the world is, as opposed to how I see it);
- my wife, Verity (who has put up with this for 9 years and counting);
do their best. They do their best, even though I am at times, one of the most unpleasant and self-obsessed individuals ever to crawl on this earth.
But I digress. ’Fierce Invalids…’ has been sat on my bookshelf ever since Richard gave it to me, another volume in my expanding pile of books to read ‘some day’. Well, Saturday became that ‘some day’. I needed a diversion, I need absorption in a novel to take me out of myself, to give me joy. I need writing and wit that would stretch my brain and nourish my soul.
Tom Robbins delivers all of this. In spades.
I have been a fan of Mr. Robbins’ for many years, ever since I read “Even Cowgirls get the Blues” in my late teens. I adored the writing, the sheer unalloyed joy, verbal wit and intellect. The larger than life but utterly plausible characters. The feats of plotting, the journeys of imagination, philosophising and life-affirming, dive-in-with-your-boots-on sense of fun.
“Personally, I prefer Stevie Wonder,” confessed the Chink, “but what the hell. Those cowgirls are always bitching because the only radio station in the area plays nothing but polkas, but I say you can dance to anything if you really feel like dancing.” To prove it, he got up and danced to the news.
See? I can’t read that without smiling, and loving the Chink!
Reading ‘Fierce Invalids…’ I’ve been struck by how little time Tom Robbins’ has for depression and self-absorption. To the author, it is narcissistic, unproductive and ultimately, it just gets in the way of the main event. Having fun and living.
Show your working
To wit:
“When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don’t think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start payin’ attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.”
— Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
Abso-fucking-lutely.
“People tend to take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that’s probably what makes ‘em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously.”
— Tom Robbins
I agree.
“Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.”
— Tom Robbins (Wild Ducks Flying Backward)
No comment!!!
Tom Robbins writes with such a rich, all-encompassing love of life, that it is impossible to not get carried away with his infectious enthusiasm for existence – all the ups, downs, backwards and sideways that it brings.
As Switters’ (the main protaganist) learns from his Grandmother, Maestra:
“All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.”
At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes.
“The key word here is roots,” Maestra had countered. “The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It’s about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn’t give a rat’s ass. Even an old tomato like me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was. So, there’s a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which if indulged, can fester into bouts of depression.”
“Yeah but Maestra – “
“Don’t interrupt. Now, unless someone stronger and wiser – a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or musician – can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in turn, can produce a neurological imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thing’ll go wrong and it’ll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black cocktail, the ol’ doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, we’re soused to the gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then it’s playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game. That’s why Switters my dearest, every time you’ve shown signs of feeling sorry for yourself, I’ve played my blues records really loud or read to you from The Horse’s Mouth. And that’s why when you’ve exhibited the slightest tendency toward self-importance, I’ve reminded you that you and me – you and I: excuse me – may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but none of us is much more than a pimple on the ass-end of creation, so let’s not get carried away with ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. It’s preventive medicine.”
“But what about self-esteem?”
“Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you’re a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace – and maybe even glory.”
— Tom Robbins (Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates)
It really gives you a sense of perspective, doesn’t it? Well, it may not to you, but it does to me.
Tom Robbins’ words hit home like daggers. He says what I imagine my friends would want to say if they felt they could. If they felt they could without upsetting me.
A thicker skin. No, scratch that. I like being thin-skinned. I like being sensitive. I like being an emotional person.
What I don’t need to keep doing is assuming that I am despised. I can’t keeping living in fear that the people I love will abandon me or dump me. Sure, they may do at some point (they have in the past). But should I let that cripple me?
What I don’t need to keep doing is assuming that I am worthless, a failure. I have achieved so much in my life. So you don’t like it? So what? I should be rightly proud of what I’ve achieved, rather than only being able to see the stuff that hasn’t quite worked.
“All a person can do in this life is gather about him his integrity, his imagination, and his individuality – and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.”
— Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)
I’m not quite in the mood for dancing (yet!), but I will be soon
In the meantime, pick up a book by Tom Robbins, and just enjoy.
