Free Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins Page A

pore-flooding humidity had combined to give him a
migraine; and the headache had combined with the disappointment over the
unavailability of air taxis to make him depressed. Fortunately, when Sailor
squawked his signature line, Switters was instantly reminded of something
Maestra had said almost twenty years before: “All depression has its roots in
self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.”
    At the time Switters had disputed her
assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical
causes.
    “The key word here is roots ,”
Maestra had countered. “The roots of depression. For most people,
self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It’s
about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a
whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it
can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first
time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news
that the world, by and large, doesn’t give a rat’s ass. Even an old tomato like
me can recall how painful, scary, and disillusioning that realization was. So,
there’s a tendency, then, to slip into rage and self-pity, which, if indulged,
can fester into bouts of depression.”
    “Yeah, but, Maestra—”
    “Don’t interrupt. Now, unless someone
stronger and wiser—a friend, a parent, a novelist, filmmaker, teacher, or
musician—can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and
pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously,
then depression can become a habit, which, in turn, can produce a neurological
imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to
react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thing’ll go
wrong and it’ll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black
cocktail, the ol’ doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, we’re soused to the
gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically
integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically
override it; by then it’s playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game.
That’s why, Switters my dearest, every time you’ve shown signs of feeling sorry
for yourself, I’ve played my blues records really loud or read to you from The
Horse’s Mouth . And that’s why when you’ve exhibited the slightest tendency
toward self-importance, I’ve reminded you that you and me—you and I :
excuse me—may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the
biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but that none of us is much more than a
pimple on the ass-end of creation, so let’s not get carried away with
ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. It’s preventive medicine.”
    “But what about self-esteem?”
    “Heh! Self-esteem is for sissies.
Accept that you’re a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it.
That way lies grace—and maybe even glory.”
    All the while that his grandmother
was assuring him that he was merely a cosmic zit, she was also exhorting him
never to accept the limitations that society would try to place on him.
Contradictory? Not necessarily. It seemed to be her belief that one
individual’s spirit could supersede, eclipse, and outsparkle the entire disco
ball of history, but that if you magnified the pure spark of spirit through the
puffy lens of ego, you risked burning a hole in your soul. Or something roughly
similar.
    In any case, Sailor Boy’s squawky
refrain reminded Switters of Maestra’s counsel. He felt better at once, but to
insure that he’d keep things in perspective, that he wouldn’t again tighten up
or inflate his minor misfortunes, he opened a hidden waterproof, airtight
pocket in his money belt and withdrew a marijuana cigarette. Then, with a tiny
special key that was disguised as the stem in his