I really should have taken my own advice and gone for a long walk in a cemetery alone.
Not that I’ve ever done it. Walking in a cemetery alone in the winter just for the heck of it, without visiting a grave, is rather peculiar. But there might be a certain charm to the exercise:
To feel my feet crunching through the snow, icy wind on my face, clearing my mind while hoping I don’t run into some lunatic or a thug who’d rob me and leave my body behind a gravestone, to be found at first thaw by some drunken, bearded caretaker.
And that might be just the thing to make myself even more depressed than I already am, as I suffer through those post-vacation blahs.
But first, I’d have to remember some gloomy cemetery walk poetry, like that one about a guy enjoying the summer at William Duffy’s farm, noticing the butterflies, the cows heading for the barn in the evening. It ends this way:
“A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
“I have wasted my life.”
Shut up, James Wright.
Or the one about Ozymandias, king of kings, “look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!” but all that remains is sand and a broken ruin or two. Which conjures a vision of my third-grade self in Miss Zabinski’s class, a tiny John Kass, mugged by Shelley, realizing that all great empires fall, even this one.
Maybe, later, I’d think on a few bawdy limericks to make me feel better, like one that begins, “There once was a man named McSweeny, who spilled some gin on his …” But really, such stupid filth has no place here.
Out for some fresh air a few minutes ago, the famed Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis tried to cheer me up.
“You’re depressed? Well, you should listen to ‘Hamilton,'” he said, referring to the musical based on the life of one of our greatest Founding Fathers.
But I hate musicals. Even musicals about federalists.
“This one’s so good,” Stantis said, explaining that Hamilton has an affair, and then writes a pamphlet explaining everything so his enemies can’t use the affair against him.
“Then his son is killed in a duel defending his father’s honor. And later, after his wife forgives him, Hamilton himself is killed,” Stantis said. “He was only 49.”
Great! Sounds like my kind of show.
The thing is, I aim to stay depressed for a few days or so. And I don’t think I’m alone. There isn’t anything particularly sad in my life. Betty’s fine, the kids are fine, we spent some good time together between Christmas and the new year.
But something happens to hamsters when we jump off the hamster wheel. You return from the time off, and you take a look at that stupid wheel, so still, so silent, and you think: What does it mean when people say, “I could give two figs.” What do the two figs represent, really?
Maybe the only way out of this is to wallow in it for a while and listen to Leonard Cohen songs. And not the happy one, either.
My colleague Old School, sensing my gloomy mood, tried to cheer me up.
“Remember in the late summer when you wrote a column about how winter is coming and you welcomed it?” he said.
Yes, my good friend, I remember.
“Well, that sounds like bull(deleted) right about now, doesn’t it?” said Old School as he ran out the door.
There are times when it’s a good thing you don’t have a ball-peen hammer nearby that you could throw at a friend as he runs away.
But Old School is right. Fool that I was, I did welcome the winter, the cold, the bleak skies. I wrote about looking forward to walking frozen alleys, listening to dry twigs scratching in the night and the distant memory of sliding into a hot car in August.
“Call me crazy,” I said of winter, “but I welcome it.”
The Tribune should print a retraction of that column right now that says, “On that day, Kass was ill.”
Consider the news, which is also depressing. In North Korea, that psycho dictator — who probably doesn’t really sing Katy Perry songs like in the movie — brags that he’s set off a hydrogen bomb.
Some local official in Lake County is fined for killing a raccoon with a tire iron. And the friendless Mayor Rahm Emanuel — who should have joined me in the cemetery walk — continues to suffer his death by 1,000 political cuts.
And what about that great story by media blogger Robert Feder? The one of the WFLD-TV news executive who sent an email ordering female reporters not to wear hats in winter so their hair would look nice on TV.
Not male reporters, just female reporters, which was so very Ron Burgundy.
Yeah, I thought about writing that, and even ran into a woman with beautiful hair who hates hats.
“I’d like to wear them,” she said, “but my head is too big. I’ve got a big head. No, I mean a really big head.”
I didn’t try to argue her out of it. Her head was gigantic. I have a big head, too, so when I see a woman with a head larger than mine I never forget. But by then everybody was writing and talking about the idiotic WFLD executive producer — whose boss was none too pleased — and I thought:
I’ve got this great quote from a big-headed woman and now what?
So it should take a few days. But I’ll get that hamster wheel rolling again.
Just give me a roast politician to eat, and I’ll feel fine.
Twitter @John_Kass
