The Battle with a Dreary Day

It was a dreary day; indeed, a wretched one. It was the sort of day in which fantastically jubilant weather torments the soul all the more. Why tormented, you ask? Is it not obvious? Bear with me, dear reader. I must beg your indulgence, for the sickness of my soul drives me to implore, and though sickness is contagious, it must yet be borne!

Have you ever imagined a world of infinite possibilities? Or perhaps you have read those Holy books, with their promises of rivers of honey and unbroken serenity? Forgive me—I drift. Back to the dreary day. The lifelessness of it! For you see, it was radiant: the sun all brightness and cheer, the trees dancing in the brisk wind, the birds singing in a jubilant symphony, with the shining grass a silent spectator.

The day, of course, cared nothing for my thoughts. The birds still sang, blithely indifferent to my sentiments. One of them, though, hopping about in search of worms, or whatever sustained its tiny existence, squeaked incessantly, as if to spite me. Yet I chose, in good humor, to imagine it was siding with me: yes, this was indeed a dreary day, and its squeaking was warranted.

Still, I thought, was not this very lifelessness a testament to my sickness? For ought I not to rejoice in the sun’s glamorous setting? Dorby certainly thought so. Ah, Dorby: he’s just the neighbor’s Canaan dog.

Allow me to say, I use “just” not to diminish his being, for I must confess: he is as sentient as I! Surely, I can craft these words to recount my dreary day, and I boast a mathematical intelligence far beyond anything Dorby could ever muster. Yet, when I look at him, I envy him, envy his blessed oblivion to the dreariness that seeps into everything.

Often I catch sight of him from my window, as I pass to the refrigerator in search of breakfast. There he is: idly exploring the yard as though it were his very first encounter with it. Surely he has traced that good ground a thousand times! How monotonous, I think. And then ahh—how quick the thought turns upon me—how monotonous is my breakfast!

Are we truly so different, Dorby and I? He in his endless circling of the yard, I in my endless circling of thought, plate, and fork. Perhaps the difference lies only in awareness. He plays at novelty; I suffer in repetition. Yet which of us, I ask, is the wiser?

Anyhow, see how I trip over myself? One thought sparks another, and then another, as though my mind, mirroring the galaxies themselves, fires at random with no aim but to drag you further from my dreary day. Forgive this scattering of attention. I shall, at once, return to the dreary day.

I earlier asked if it was obvious—indulge my explanation now. I awoke as I have for each of my thirty-six years: with the ghost of a dream still clinging to me, briefly animating the soul, then vanishing into nothing. I thought to myself: I must rise, as those seven billion others do. And then again I thought: here are the Gods, granting me yet another day. A new life! What a strange experience, this being alive.

Hear me out. Once, long ago—millions, billions of years, I know not when, for numbers aren’t my strongest suit—I was in the stars. Stardust, to be exact, or at least I am told. I do not know how many eons ago, but I do know this: countless other self-aware star-dust beings preceded me, paving a road for my existence. And what does it mean, all this?

As I leaned into the thought, shifting on my pillow in search of comfort, for a stubborn ache in my neck had decided to join the chorus of my drearinessm,my phone rang. A spam caller. Yet another, as though on cosmic cue. Years ago my number had found its way into some database, and now they never fail to disturb me with their grand offers—pitched with the fervor of prophets, yet always as hollow as the void itself. 

Resigned, I went to brush my teeth. For see, I too am a creature of habit—like Dorby. In the mirror I caught myself, inhabiting this strange vehicle of flesh. For a fleeting instant, it was as though I were seeing myself for the very first time!  The recognition was unbearable. I shook my head violently, desperate to discard the thought, for surely it must be a beautiful day outside! Alas, the dreariness remained my companion. 

See, I am limited. They tell me two chromosomes separate me from the chimpanzee, though we share ninety-nine percent of our genetic fabric. And if I were to wander into the forest and snatch a bonobo from its endless routine (and I doubt these bonobos have dreary days!)—were I to explain to it the nature of my dreariness, it would surely fail to understand.

I, at least, possess twenty-six letters in my repertoire, and from them a few thousand words. You too, I assume—if you’ve kept your deck of cards intact—have your five senses. This, then, is what lies at my disposal: a pitifully finite toolkit. And yet I must, I must explain to you just how dreary my day was!

I am told emotions are nothing more than chemical firings in the brain—some immutable in the structure of my neurons, others sculpted by the environment I inhabit. But one thing I know with certainty: I feel the dreariness in my chest! In such moments, I am reminded that infinite worlds do exist inside my head. See—I can almost glimpse them now.

Here I am, in the twenty-first century, where entire universes unfold through mediums that once would have been called magic. Today, on a whim, I typed: a journey in the Milky Way. And there I was, transported into space, with only my eyes as vessel, peering into a vastness my ape-brain will never, ever fathom. Everlastingly not? I wondered. For word spreads in the town of brain chips—devices poised to bind me with other self-aware stardust beings. Perhaps then I might comprehend where I am?

I shook my head, as though to rattle loose such thoughts, and just then the bell rang! Ah—finally, I thought—my chicken delivery had arrived. It was not alive, of course, though it had been. I could not help but wonder what that chicken had seen of the world. Still, I was glad I had not been forced to hunt it down myself. For had I been born hundreds, thousands of years ago, I would have been driven into the wilderness. Do my successors, I wonder, look upon my ordering of chicken as I look upon their flint tools and caves—primitive, long past?

But the spell was broken. Pulled back from my Milky Way reverie to my chicken, and from the chicken back to myself, I felt it again—in my chest, unwavering and cruel. The day was still dreary.

Will I die in the next minute? I could, I thought. But will I?

They tell me time is yet another dimension, something my meager brain can only grasp as a continuum. Some physicists say the past, present, and future all exist at once: like peering through a hole in a box, where the visible is the present, what slips from sight becomes the past, and what is still hidden is called the future. Yet from above the box, they insist, all of it exists together—past, present, future, eternal! 

And I wondered: what if I had a thousand senses? Unlike the bat, who detects the invisible waves of sound, what might I perceive? Could I taste time itself? Could I sense the simultaneity of it all—birth, death, every dreary morning stacked atop one another, like pages read all at once? I don’t know. But I do know that this day is dreary. I can feel it; it is in my chest! I wish I can show you, somehow, beyond the medium of letters! 

See, there is even a science now—the science of dreariness, or rather, its supposed antidote: happiness. They tell me that deliberate exposure to discomfort—cold, strain, weight pressed upon the body, or the lungs stretched to their limit—produces its opposite. That which is defied, they claim, becomes joy.

I thought to myself: anything but this dreariness! If pain is the remedy, then let me suffer gladly. I must head to the gym at once!

And so, with dreariness in my chest and science in my head, I set out for the gym. Within it, I thought, there must exist the promise to suspend this dreariness—for I must trick my apish brain to behave! On the way, I passed an old woman with her dog: a tiny Maltese, its tongue perpetually sticking out, its gait as weary as hers. They moved together, each sustaining the other unwittingly, like a chemical reaction: her hand leaning heavy on the leash, his legs stumbling forward with the kind of loyalty that does not ask why. For a moment I thought—yes, this is life: weakness meeting weakness, creating a fragile strength. I had to wonder: does that woman feel dreary? Did she fail to recognize herself in the mirror today? What stories circle in her head?

Entering the gym, I was greeted by the usual chorus of iron clashing, treadmills humming, bodies panting. This is modern-day hunting, I thought. I took my place among them, yet even here the dreariness lingered. It even seemed to amplify, for everyone else appeared untouched by it! Then it happened: a glance, accidental at first, with a man across the weight rack. He had a stern look; he stared too long. I stared back. Some primitive current sparked between us—animosity born not of reason, but of eyes colliding, or perhaps of my brain mistaking lifted weight for some contest of survival, spiking my testosterone. Each set I performed felt like a duel; each repetition was an answer to his silent challenge.

And then, as though to shatter the spell, he walked over. I braced for confrontation. Instead, he nodded, pointed to my arms, and said with a beaming smile: “Veins. Nice biceps.”

I laughed, not aloud, but inside, where the dreariness had sat all day. The hostility melted into connection. Half an hour later, I stepped into my car, thoughts of fruit colliding into nightly sustenance floating through my mind. And then it struck me: I had forgotten the dreariness.

Ah, dear reader, forgive me, for in the end, I still cannot tell you what dreary is. I only know that it visits me, lodges in my chest, and sometimes—by accident, by smile, by vein—it departs. And because I have told you of it, I am not the only one aware…