On the Suck of Panic! At the Workplace!

12/05/2006 7:35 AM – 7:58 AM

Panic attacks suck. If at all possible, I recommend avoiding them. Though, to my credit, I wasn’t fooled into thinking that it was a heart attack. No, my extensive familiarity with crazy allowed me to recognize that this was just one more kind. A new flavor of nuts. It is however, quite different. There is a certain exquisite agony to depression. If you’ve got a few years to kill, you can wallow in it and learn Big Big things. Panic just lets you know you’re gonna die and that you are, in fact, terrified of that. Stupid panic.

“By grace alone” – how do you say that one in Latin? “Sola gracias”? Ah, I’ll check later. This, you see is the odd conclusion that preceded and proceeded the panic. It’s very Calvinistic, which to me, being one more tending to the idolatry of free will as opposed to the idolatry of a Greek definition of Sovereignty, is odd. But, at this point, it is an apparently inescapable conclusion. Coupled with a doctrine of Universal Reconciliation, it’s not so bad, but if taken in the traditionally Calvinistic doctrine of “the elect.” It’s a bum bit.

But, like I said, such talk preceded the panic (perhaps it should be Panic! Like in “Panic! At the Disco!), so let us peel off from a path that leads to the terror of a doctrine of Universal Damnation. It’s the little things that keep the devil at bay. “This is me. Not being dead and damned. Breathing. In. Out.” - those things keep it down, but it is rather exhausting. But better than the alternative. Let us practice: In. Out. Typing. Words. Coffee. Lightbulb. Sunshine. Snow. Orangey-orange light ridged by the shadow of Venetian curtains, painting a vertical line on the winter blue-reflecting paint of my wall. Tissues scattered about. Tobacco. Butts. MP3 player. Joanna Newsom (the old album – haven’t gotten the new one yet), pennies – seven visible, three tails, four heads. Mr. Id freaking out at the sight of an AAA battery. There are things that are here and being and not scary. And now the light grows less orange but much larger. And then the bell rings and it’s time to go. And there it is. I’m not dead and damned at this moment. Nor this one. Nor this one. And we just keep saying that forever.