Sometimes.1

Sometimes, even an incurable optimist like me, a news junkie and a data-head who never seems to acquire enough information, and an emotional being who never seems to get enough hugs, starts feeling (1) overwhelmed, and (2) depressed.

I am not quite sure what is causing my current tailspin, but some combination of the political, economic, and the personal has turned toxic lately. Yesterday, as the House rejected the bailout plan and the markets crashed, my sense of being disoriented intensified in a way I've seldom felt since 9/11, or even after my various breakups with the women I've loved.

Now, when a woman gets a food craving, she has plenty of potential excuses. Maybe she's pregnant or maybe it's that time of the month, or maybe even it's menopause.

Why does a man get such cravings? Specifically, why can I not seem to get enough edamame? I've been buying the stuff in bulk lately, heating it, salting it, and consuming it as if there might be no tomorrow.

Why is this happening to me now? Is it the "referred pain" of never seeing Junko, who's on another long trip to Japan, and, even when here, is usually across town in her beloved Castro neighborhood?

Or, more likely, have I suddenly become dehydrated, sort of a desiccated old chunk of leather better suited as beef jerky than living, breathing manhood. Or, even worse, am I going through man-o-pause? That, of course, is the dreaded state where a hard-driving, professionally successful writer suddenly starts losing his voice.

Think of it as a potentially fatal form of laryngitis emanating from the fingertips, wired directly from the frontal lobe. If I suddenly have nothing to say, why am I still alive? Perhaps that is what Lucretius asked himself after imbibing that awful love potion. I bet so.

Where I am headed here. Let's back up, slow down time, and consider some fundamentals. Some years ago, several rather wise therapists pointed out to me that a person who is not getting hugged enough each day is a person depressed. Well, at least on days when I see my children or close friends, I get lots of hugs, so that is not likely to be my problem.

So, then there are the facts. The melting of the ice caps. The dire state of animal species, like polar bears, now resorting to cannibalism. The shifting currents and temperature patterns, creating monster storms like Katrina that destroy everything in their wake. Red tides and "dead zones," and the ever-advancing Earth Overshoot date -- all indicators that something ain't right in Brooklyn, not to mention the rest of this planet.

Earlier this year, I was privileged to work with activists on a plan to alleviate world hunger through serious eco-agricultural reform -- a plan that was tepidly embraced by the world's governments.

Now, I am witnessing a political campaign that frightens me to my core. Palin is the scariest candidate of my lifetime -- at least since Barry Goldwater (who I also supported -- so much for my judgment!) I don't care that Palin couldn't handle softball questions from Katie Couric or that she flubs other fine points of policy.

I fear her emotional appeal to all of us Americans. Of course, we all secretly wish to return to a simpler time, a time when we thought we knew what the right course to pursue when we heard it. Today, in a complicated global political economy that overwhelms even the most sophisticated computer models run by macro-economists, no one truly knows what we should do next.

No one. To me, that is truly scary. Perhaps I have a right to be depressed?


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