Dark and slow

There's something of a quiet melancholy about rainy days. They make us lonelier. Incessant all-day-rains, looming gray clouds, and damp windswept evenings (it's been like this for the last few days) have an air of loss and longing. Or, at least, so I felt.

No wonder, the profuse rains of the last few days have put me in a pensive mood. I scampered around the rooms, tried to read, stood on the balcony -- but something made me restless. It's as if the soggy air had slowed down time and there's no sound except the slow rhythmic pattering of raindrops.

And it became particularly unbearable during the last weekend. All day, listening to the sounds of raindrops and the swishing winds, I tried to sleep (so that the time passes away while I sleep). But in the semi-darkness of the rooms, cold and smelling of stale air, my senses became so sharp that I couldn't sleep.

But melancholy, despite the gloom and despondency, is also a source of subtle pleasure for me. Indeed, as Orhan Pamuk describes in Istanbul: Memories and the City about the melancholia of the city of Istanbul as huzun (a Turkish word whose Arabic root denotes a feeling of deep spiritual loss but also a hopeful way of looking at life): "a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negating."

I'm all for pleasure and happiness. I want them. But I also want my share of melancholy. Because it is melancholy that helps me understand myself more intimately.

PS: A previous post on melancholy.