Billy Collins studies a map . . .
The Deep
by: Billy Collins
the land all black except for the names of the continents
whereas the watery parts, colored blue,
have topographical features and even place names
like the Bermuda Rise, which sounds harmless enough
as does the Cocos Ridge, but how about exploring
The Guafo Fracture Zone when you're all alone?
And from the many plateaus and seamounts—
the Falkland, the Manning, the Azores—
all you could see is water and if you're lucky
a big fish swallowing a school of smaller ones
through the bars of your deep-sea diver's helmet.
And talk about depth: at 4,000 feet below the surface,
where you love to float on your back all summer,
we enter the Midnight Zone where the monkfish
quietly says his prayers in order to attract fresh prey,
and drop another couple of miles and you
have reached The Abyss where the sea cucumber
is said to undulate minding its own business
unless it's deceiving an attacker with its luminescence
before disappearing into the blackness.
What attacker, I can hear you asking,
would be down there messing with the sea cucumber?
And that is exactly why I crumpled the map into a ball
and stuffed it in a metal wastebasket
before heading out for a long walk along a sunny trail
in the thin, high-desert air, accompanied
by juniper trees, wildflowers, and that gorgeous hawk.
I think everyone harbors a certain fear of deep things--water, caverns, tunnels, conversations, therapy. It's very human to avoid places or circumstances that force you to confront the sea cucumbers or monkfish of your life. Not to mention those large, dark shapes so far away that you can't even identify them.
Most people retreat to the familiar and comfortable. A sunny trail lined with juniper trees and wildflowers. I just finished teaching a Good Books class at the university. All of the memoirs, novels, and graphic memoirs we read this semester dealt in some way with forms of mental illness. In several of the works, when the authors are dealing with deep depressions, they begin reading books they loved as a child, which makes complete sense to me.
Think about it. You feel yourself floating in an abyss of darkness, where you can't seem to find any light whatsoever. Then you start reading Charlotte's Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Island of the Blue Dolphins--stories that are so familiar you can almost recite them from memory. It's like draping yourself in a warm quilt. For a short while, you gain a miniscule sense of control over your life.
I've been swimming in the deep for a while now. What have I been doing for comfort? Reading poets I love. Mary Oliver, in particular. Watching movies I've seen a hundred times. White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye is my current jam. I still cry, but the tears are familiar to me. I expect to get choked up when I read "Wild Geese" by Oliver or watch the final scene in White Christmas when it starts to snow on Christmas Eve. I guess that's my version of crumpling up my map of the deep, scary oceans, throwing it out, and going for a sunny walk.
Sometimes, even looking out a window you've looked out thousands of times can be a form of therapy. From my office at the library, I can see the church across the street, a tree that's still retaining fragments of autumn in its branches, and falling snow. Three small, lit Christmas trees line the windowsill. On the tree are Bigfoot ornaments, adorned with the word "Believe."
Saint Marty needs that reminder on a daily basis right now.
