new dog in the casa

Churchill's Black Dog has been paying an unwelcome visit for about two days.


Not a full-blown, fang-baring attack, mind you. Just an awareness that things were not as they should be. Heavy chest. Vague sense of forboding.


And that old familiar panting and growling that depression is merely part of the human condition.


An idiot could have predicted that something like this would occur. I left a very comfortable life and exchanged it for exactly what I wanted -- waking every morning not knowing how I am going to get through the day.


Then add the fact that Darrel and I have been holed up in the house for almost a full week just trying to get ourselves oriented.


But, just as Annie promised: the sun did come out on Wednesday.


I drove over to Barra de Navidad to meet with the local Rotary club. As a former Rotarian, I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet people with a common sense of community.


The meeting was fine. But that is not where I felt the change.


On the way over, I turned on the CD. The music does not matter. The result does. I literally felt my spirit lifting with each chorded lyric.


When I returned home, I found Marta diligently at work cleaning up the weekly ravages of living so close to the sea.


She is an employee who strives to please. But, our inability to communicate has been a mutual pain for both of us.


She stopped for a moment to talk. And, amazingly, I understood the big points. I now know where she was born and raised. In turn, having just returned with my constancia in hand, I explained my FM3 process to her -- badly.


But we were actually exchanging ideas. I felt my spirit lift one more level.


Ann Lamott once wrote of a healing moment between two very different people:

I can't imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.

I agree with Ann that music is a great healer. But successfully starting to break through a language barrier shares the same essential alchemy.


Have I now learned Spanish? Of course not. What I have learned is that it is not something to fear, but something that offers a great prize at the end.


I have often admired Winston Churchill's choice of the term "black dog" to describe his dark depressions. It is really a term of hope.


Dogs, after all, even though they have minds and wills of their own, are creatures that can be trained and controlled. Or simply be locked up.


In my case, the dog was as good natured as the benificent Professor Jiggs. And the dark dog is now gone. But I am not putting away his leash.


Not just yet.