The Grey and the price of kissing the Sun
This morning finds me dull, enveloped by the Grey¹, a consequence of the decisions I’ve made this year. Decisions I’ve made without regret. Decisions I’d make again and again. Decisions that will affect me for the rest of my life. A connection that is both blessing and burden. A circumstance unbidden — befallen.
The anomalous voyager faces both wonders and dangers on their journey. I find the myth of Icarus helpful, at least for my state of mind today.
“The boy began to delight in his bold flight, and, abandoning his guide, seized by desire for the sky, he steered a higher course.” — Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.223-225.
Icarus, son of the craftsman Daedalus, escaped imprisonment in Crete on wings his father made from feathers and wax, but, intoxicated by the freedom of flight, he ignored his father's warnings and soared too close to the sun. The wax melted, and he plunged into the sea and drowned.
The wax melted by proximity, and Icarus died. That is the lesson most learn in school. But what of the man who kissed the sun only to survive the fall. The one who wakes up each morning to find his senses burned, leaving ordinary life numb, joyless, and tasteless. How the supernormal blinds the normal. How I have forgotten the taste of the ordinary. How I long for any taste, here or there.
Does this merit caution? Perhaps.
But I fully admit that even if I had known the consequences beforehand — the scarring, the numbness, the Grey — I wouldn't have changed a thing. For kissing the Sun is more than just a kiss. More than just intoxication, enchantment, and euphoria.
Those who know, know.
And so, on mornings like this one, I wake with the taste of nothing, and the memory of why. Both are gifts. Both are debts.² Both symbols of the bond I’ve embraced. One foot in the past, one in the future — the herenow and the hereafter.
Notes:
It's a mistake to diagnose the Grey as melancholia or some form of depressive state. Though it has qualities that mirror depression, it is a psychospiritual state all its own, where the absence of one incurs symptoms in another. A depression of spirits, per the 19th century definition, is a better description than the modern one. Perhaps a depression of soul is a better phrasing still — where the soul is partially or wholly alienated from its counterpart.
The gift of choice to choose deserves the conviction to follow through.
By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.