“But careful, careful! Don’t get excited. You know what happens when you get excited and exalted, don’t you?….Yes….And then, you know how you collapse like a pricked balloon, don’t you?…Having no staying power….Yes, exactly….So, no excitement. This is going to be a quiet, sane fortnight.”
Extract from Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
A lot of any emotion can feel a little too much.
It’s better to keep everything calm, stable and on the same level – even when the emotion’s something good like excitement.
We’ve been repressing things for years. Maybe it’s linked into civilisation coming along and writing the social rules. Or, maybe it’s just part of the human condition; an emotional version of defence.
I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’—
But, when Travellers tell
How those old—phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still—
Bear within—appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun,
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men—
If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When upon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place—
Extract from Emily Dickinson
I can understand self protection – but everyone knows that expression’s healthier than repression. Feelings tend to surge up and explode when they’re left to fester. Excitement turns to hysteria; anger to violence; pain to despair.
The Life that tied too tight escapes
Will ever after run
With a prudential look behind
And spectres of the Rein —
Extract from Emily Dickinson
Anorexia was about repression; bulimia, a twisted form of release. The one led to the other.
Your version may be different.
But finding a way of getting things out healthily seems to be a bit or a recurring problem –
Maybe we all need to take a leaf out of Emily Dickinson’s writing about it book?
Or maybe we just need to go and give that treadmill a good pummeling? -
- because it’ll come out somehow.
Tags: Control, poetry and prose
