We’re on Day 4 of gray, gray, gray (did I mention gray?) weather here in NYC. There’s a reason I don’t live in Portland or Seattle and it has nothing to do with the engaged liberal politics, delicious coffee, and bike-friendly roadways. It’s the gray.
Though some people find gray romantic and misty and subtly soft and encompassing, I find it frowny. It reminds me of death and decay and absence of light. I recall a home makeover show on HGTV a few years ago in which neighbors re-design a room in each other’s houses with the “help” of a designer. In this episode, one of the neighbors happened to be Andy Dick, an annoying little bastard, but in this case totally right on. His neighbor, a red-headed actress, had stipulated only one preference: NO GRAY. I practically high-fived the TV. So of course, the designer went about painting the entire room in frowny-faced charcoal. Annoying Andy kept saying, “She’s gonna hate this!” as he rolled the liquid sadness on her walls. The chirpy designer was one of those gray-lovers who can’t comprehend a hate of gray—it is hydrogen to their oxygen. “No, she won’t!” she chirped. “She won’t even notice it once we have these splashes of orange in here. It’ll just be a soothing backdrop.” Andy said, “She’s gonna haaaate it,” revealing his glee at the impending calamity. The designer started to look nervous, but forged ahead.
When the “reveal” moment came, the blindfolded actress was lead into her library/craft room/guest room. When she excitedly lowered the cover from her eyes and took in the space, with its DEFCON-3-level sad walls and tangerine highlights—her face crashed and she burst into tears. “It looks like a trashcan,” she said, sobbing. The designer looked on nervously, trying lamely to talk her out of this assessment. Andy Dick bounced around.
That is all to say, some people are allergic to gray—sufferers of GAD—Gray Affective Disorder, which strikes no matter the sunless season. They do not live in cities with perma-fog, no matter how many per-capita organic rooftop gardens exist. They live in Southern California or Hawaii or own Happy Lights they keep on full blast from October to May. They, ok, we, have survival strategies: We try to make sure life stays afloat in other ways when there’s a string of too many days in which no sunlight shines. We clean, eat cheering food, wear neon pink, work hard, play hard, paint colorful paintings, buy flowers, do yoga, talk to trusted friends about invention ideas for cloud-removal devices. And when the gray is unrelenting, like it is this week, we start thinking ugly, sad thoughts, as anyone living inside a gray, plastic trashcan might. We start thinking maybe life is not worth living if it’s all going to be this particular color of cloud.
My brain was wending down this road this morning. I noticed it (thank you, therapy and yoga!) and started making a list in my head. The Things I Wanna Do Before I Die list. One might not think this is cheering, but to me it is mental ambrosia. It reminds me of the future, of brighter days to come. It includes things like:
– Finish book
– Write other books
– Paint a mural
– Speak to giant audiences about life, making them laugh and cry and think
– Go to Iceland to soak in pools of naturally hot water
– Go to Hawaii to see volcano lava
– Swim with dolphins
– Have a kid
– Go to Burning Man
– Start a vegetable and flower garden
– Start a healing & arts center with lots of yurts
– Learn a healing modality
– Fly
Just thinking of all those things helps fend off the rest of the clouds trying to enter my brain. I know I should somehow be letting go and relaxing and accepting the gray and deeply experiencing my uncomfortable feelings. Fuck that. I wanna fly—there’s sun up there.
I need to move.