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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I was eleven and at my Ontario aunt's house with my family, in the gap between Christmas and New Year. It might have been before December 25, but I remember it as between then and New Year - a sort of lurch, a void, something of the fearful wastes in the middle of Dr. Seuss's "Oh, the Places You'll Go," which I was still a bit frightened by, along with the Dr. Seuss book where a kid thinks too hard and thinks up a Thunk (the terrible monster of a too-deep thought).
During the car trip there, the classical station played Greensleeves in old-school Dorian mode rather than regular minor. I didn't know what Dorian mode was, but I could tell the sixth note was higher than usual. It seemed piercing and strange, like the word "poignant," which I might or might not have known. I didn't like it. It upset the melody's hummability and I stared out the window, suddenly forlorn.
My "Ontario aunt" lives in a small town north of Kingston. Her house used to be a hotel. It was familiar but not quite, like the raised sixth on that What Child Is This tune. It was also very cold.
I woke up the day after the arrival at three or four in the morning. I kept trying to fall asleep, but I couldn't. The only light was from the L shape of the cracked-open door. In my real room, the hallway light was much brighter. I kept looking at the L, which reminded me I hadn't gone to sleep and I wasn't in my own house, where I could wake Mom up and ask her to please "stay a little while." I was too old for that anyway.
When morning came it felt like I'd lost my imagination. I didn't want to get out of bed. Everything seemed blank. I think I ate some cereal, then went back up to the room. There was a Bible on the bookshelf that I read for a while, trying to be good, but I didn't feel good. I said I didn't "feel well" and was mostly left alone. I sat on the bed, doing nothing.
Even as I felt imagination had left me - and imagination was a big deal for me at the time: Sesame Street, Dr. Seuss, Anne of Green Gables - I kept thinking how I'd describe this feeling later. "It felt like I had no imagination," was a good one; "I felt like I couldn't think," was another... but I was thinking, and the depression crept back in: what's if I couldn't describe it? What's if it was too blank to be described? What's if I could never describe it because I'd never get out of it alive?
My parents finally came up to convince me to go skiing. I didn't want to. I told them that. They said it would do me good.
Now, even though I felt terrible, I felt it was a noble kind of terrible and didn't want to undignify my mood by acting bratty. So I dressed in a lumpy snowsuit and headed out the door.
The frozen lake stretched out white and severe. Mom made new tracks in the snow and I followed mechanically. My skis dragged and the wind stung my cheeks. My hands were going numb. They'd said exercise would do me good, but I was cold all over.
Eventually, I was back inside and my cheeks were turning pink. I sat in the living room on a couch that no longer exists and looked down at the toys my brother had scattered on the floor. Gears started turning in my brain. (That image came to my usually literal mind because I was looking at gears). I thought of robots, jewelry boxes, curled-up paper, and I realized my imagination had returned. Supper that night was wonderful.
Since then, the Dorian mode, and the old Greensleeves tune especially, makes me feel nostalgic in a rather pleasant way.
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