Flowers for nanci blu

In the story "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, Charlie is a mentally challenged janitor who becomes part of an experiment, first championed by Algernon the lab mouse, to artificially augment his limited intelligence. The process is a success, at least at first, and Charlie becomes a genius as the drugs he is taking work their magic. As a result of this, Charlie himself goes on to take over the experiment, his mental acuity and capabilities now so much more than anyone around him. The story takes a turn as Charlie realizes, working thru the calculations and such as he works further on the experiment, that there is a flaw in the basic foundations of the experiment, and that according to his calculation, he will start to experience a decline in his newly acquired mentality, returning to his prior mentally challenged state. The story is told from the POV of Charlie, and we get to witness firsthand Charlie's remarkable ascent from simpleton to genius and in disturbing detail, his fall from that lofty state.

Regardless of the controversy surrounding the relative values of genius/simpleton and the mentally challenged, this is a rough parallel of what is happening to me, emotionally, and in some regards, cognitively. Happily, I have experienced a year and a half respite from the months long depression periods that I have been accustomed to experiencing yearly for over twenty years now and had thought that I had overcome my 'disability,' but it now seems, at this point, that that is not the case. Over the last couple of weeks I have begun to experience the behaviors and such that characterize and mark these periods of despond. Some of them are: a marked decline in my mental acuity, procrastination on all levels that require personal motivation, a general disregard or caring for appearance and cleanliness, an inability to get out of bed unless absolutely necessary, a general sense of dystopia, finding no satisfaction or joy in anything that I do, even to those things that I most cherish (music, writing, ice cream etc). Where I am usually optimistic and confident in my approach to life, during these times I find myself if not pessimistic, at least with no confidence in my abilities, even to the point of feeling embarrassed regarding my former state of confidence and optimisim and the conclusions I may have drawn at those times. Where before I was interested, interactive, and motivated, now there just ain't no 'wanna' anymore, and everything is a fight to escape an internal inertia that keeps me nailed to my bed. And even when I do do convince myself to get up and out, the rest of that time is spent actively waiting to get back to bed. An upshot of this is that I find myself committed to things that I am no longer able to do, really, other than cursorily.

This last is not satisfactory, with special regard to my feelings of competence and responsibility, and so, as I have done in the past, I am suspending all those activities that need more than surface level participation. To those this inconveniences, my apologies, but better this than me not showing up when expected, or showing up and not being able to perform to the level that is required.

See you on the upswing

With regret

nanci blu