On the Great Gray Funk

10/16/2007 7:39 AM – 9:26 AM (this started out as an instant but did not finish as such)

There’s this thing I was reading. My latest research project is on the “survivor type.” Which was the title of a pretty good Stephen King story. Not one of his best but, like most King stories, memorable. But his type of survivor differs from the one I’ve been reading about. I’m looking at the more normal survivor, not the one inclined to do a lot of coke and eat his feet.

But that’s still stewing and I don’t really have thoughts that cohere at the moment. One thing that’s come out of the reading though is a theory that, in order to feel as if we exist, we need observe being observed on occasion. Somehow, we require seeing someone seeing us in order to confirm our existence. Which is silly. It’s much more reasonable to see and know ourselves and work from there. Like Descartes. But he blew it logically once he got to verification of the world apart from the mind. But, if you start from thought and work your way out, you’re going to run into problems anyway. ‘Course if you start with the out and work your way in, you’ll run into verification problems as well.

But enough of the holistic rational approach, it’s riddled with verification problems. The particular empirical approach however, while unsatisfactorily devoid of cohesion or theories, works. The tendency of the human creature is to require an observation of being observed in order to confirm its existence. Silly, as I said. The reason this was mentioned in a book on survivors was that the author was discussing the motivation of people that got lost or stranded somewhere alone and survived the ordeal. One thing that kept popping up in his research was this drive to be looked at by someone else. And it’s odd, that. Something as practical as surviving being driven by something as abstract as having your existence observed.

When I was younger, I loved cloudy days best (which is a good survival tendency for someone growing up in Western New York). That’s shifted in the past few years, but I still love a good bit of clouds on occasion. When I was younger and my whole life revolved around church and God (mostly in that order), I felt a certain relief in cloudy days. Despite the fact that my church’s theology was slightly more sophisticated than placing God up and the Devil down, that feeling of God as looking down from the sky persisted. On cloudy days, therefore, the feeling that I was momentarily free from his gaze obtained. It was the feeling, not the thought. I still believed that God was watching, but the feeling that I needed to be a good boy (which, as an aside, is a compulsion that most survivor types don’t feel) loosened. On cloudy days I felt as if I were allowed to be more myself than the thing that my church wanted me to be because of the silly feeling that the clouds obscured God’s view of me. I would wander on cloudy days, down the railroad tracks, up the hills, across the fields, through the woods, along the stream, carrying my BB gun or jack-knife, feeling slightly dangerous, slightly more alive than on days of blue skies. But now I am older and the feeling that I am going to die someday has arrived to fortify the knowledge of the fact.

There is an atmospheric condition in lake-effect areas known as the “Great Gray Funk.” Basically, the lake that, during the summer, tends to keep the sky more clear than would be expected in non-lake-effect areas, during the winter tends to do the exact opposite. From late fall to late spring, the land leeward the lake is usually cast in a swaddling of thick gray clouds. The temperatures are milder than that of the surrounding unaffected areas, but the clouds pile on top of clouds. My younger self would love it. My present self is content to survive it.

When the insistence on God is briefly removed, there is a sigh of relief. When the absence endures, one starts to hear the echo that indicates a deeper hollow. There never was a God like the one they told me about while I was growing up. I still believe that there is a God, but his substance is more subtle and mysterious than I was taught. In this life, he does not always punish the wicked nor reward the righteous. The blessed are blessed not with good fortune but the ability to enjoy whatever fortune they endure.

Yesterday, the clouds came in for the first time this year. There had been clouds previously, but the clouds of the Great Gray Funk are a type of their own. There is a thick, soggy chill to them that we do not see in the summer. Today, the clouds have thinned and there is a rosy rippling to their skin. “But I’ll be coming soon,” says the Great Gray Funk, bringing with him that feeling of a further separation.

We require, at times, seeing someone seeing us in order to confirm our existence. If You cannot bless us with your gaze, bless us at least with the ability to enjoy enduring in its absence.