Playing With The Black Dog

  Casey:  There are two wolves and they are always fighting. One is darkness and despair.

The other is light and hope.  Which wolf wins?

Her Father:  Come on, Casey.

  Casey:  Okay,  fine.   Don't answer.

Her Father:  Whichever one you feed.

Playing with the black dog is not quite the same thing as feeding the wrong wolf although it is related.   The black dog is acute gut grabbing despair.   One source of this for me has always been the rather addictive nostalgic romps I take into my past.  The problem is that processing the re-surfacing memories and their implications is not always an on-the-spot thing but rather a waking up in the middle-of-the-night in a state of abject despair sort of thing.   Those are my black dog moments and usually involve dealing with things and feelings that once existed but are no longer there.   I suppose it is a kind of grieving for myself,  each time it is something I must  find a way to swim out of before I am sucked down into permanent madness.  

After the first of these I had some grasp of the demons that people like Virginia Woolf struggled with on a daily basis,  and as you can see I too use stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

I call it "playing" with the black dog because it is not predictable.  An unexpectedly satisfying and nice visit to Strongsville results in a troubled night while a traumatic reminder of a genuinely sucky incident has no impact.   So it goes.

 I suspect that "playing with the black dog" is what Holly Golightly called "the mean reds"

Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?

Paul Varjak:  The mean reds, you mean like the blues?

Holly Golightly:  No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

Paul Varjak:  Sure.

Holly Golightly: Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

Simplistically there is a great deal of id, ego and super-ego action behind these episodes and probably behind other "moment of clarity" revelations,  even if you do not entirely accept Freudian constructs (for example what if your conscience is the voice of God?).  It might also offer insight into the concept of spirituality,  what with religion(s) being so essential to the human condition because it offers relief from these occasions of intense despair.  What if those more needy experience these intense moments much more frequently?  Would that lead them to the nearest religion as the only coping mechanism available to them other than sedation?   And does the group dynamics of an "organized" religion corrupt and compromise the super-ego,  effectively shutting off the part of your conscience that is your individual channel to God?