the book of the false sun

Today, I went out and bought myself a new god.

But let me start at the beginning.

I’d finally crawled out of bed around noon. I loathe myself every time I do it, but I just can’t resist the embrace of my warm sheets these past few months. I told myself I was going to get some work done today, but I knew all was lost when I found myself in the studio chair with the iPad in my hands and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality on the Kindle app.

Around one o’clock, the sun struck me through the window. I opened the window and stuck my head out. It was even more wonderfully bright than it was through the glass. I thought of what I’d just been reading – an account of Harry struggling with a horde of Dementors, being that broadcast misery and hopelessness. And of my own time fighting the Black Dog of depression. A conversation on Twitter came to mind: I’d bemoaned the fact that all I’ve really wanted to do seems to be sleep, that I have no energy. Farore replied that it sounded like depression. I’d realized that yes, that exactly described my state, and that it happened every year like clockwork since I’d moved North. It was a less miserable flavor than the snowed-in depression of Boston, but the lack of sun was clearly affecting me. I researched sun lamps, then just… moped off. Depression makes it hard to try things that will lift you out of it.

But here I was thinking about the way this caricature of depression kept people in its clutches. And staring at the sun, having recently found that there’s a place that sells a variety of sun lamps out in Fremont.

“Fuck it,” I said. “I’m going out.”

Walking down the Burke-Gillman trail in the sun, I considered how different the sunlight made me feel. It’s as if I’m asleep when it lurks behind a cloud for hours. Up and moving around, but still asleep, just drifting through the bare motions of a day instead of actually doing things I love to do like drawing or dancing.

The clouds had covered the sun by the time I made it to the Indoor Sun Shoppe in Fremont. But I was still somewhat energized from the exercise. And then I opened the door to the place. It’s mostly an indoor gardening supply shop, full of plants… and of light. Bright, beautiful, artificial sunlight.

I had to ask one of the people who works there to help me find the sunlamps for people rather than plants. They were lurking in a dark corner in the back. When she turned them all on, I almost fell to my knees in front of the biggest one, worshipping it. I am solar powered, make no mistake; I’m at least a third-generation New Orleanian, I spent the first twenty-five years of my life there, and the next ten in Los Angeles. I didn’t realize how much I truly need the Sun until I was living further north.

I don’t know if buying the biggest sun lamp in the place was really the best decision. But it was like being in the grocery store when you’re hungry. I’d been starving, and I wanted to have the lowest chance of starving again.

I ended up having to go home for my little luggage cart, as the box was simply too unwieldy to carry to the bus. What with one thing and another, I got there fifteen minutes after the place closed; luckily the woman who had helped me was the one closing, and she let me in to load it up and take it home.

And now it sits there just inside the door, where I left it after the long trip home. Still in the box, still bungee’d onto the cart. My new False God, whose divine radiance I plan to bask in every day until I can celebrate the triumphant return of Ra to Seattle’s skies. Hopefully this will be what I need to drag myself out of that weary state where I’m too listless to draw, which only makes me more guilty and depressed – the horrible, horrible cycle of depression.