Take It Like a Dragon

[rowyn]

I didn't want to go to work today. I thought about calling in sick, but there wasn't any point. I didn't really want to be at home, either. I didn't want to be anywhere. I might as well go to work and get paid to be somewhere.

I tried calling my brain instead. "Hello, brain? Look, I'm not gonna be able to be depressed today."

Brain: "WHAT?"

Me: "I've got things I have to do, and I just don't have time -- "

Brain: "Well you MAKE time! You've been not-depressed for months!"

Me: "See, about that, I was kind of hoping to stay that way -- "

Brain: "HAHA NO CHANCE. You don't get to call off from depression. DEPRESSION COMES TO WORK YOU."

Me: "No it doesn't! You're not the boss of me!"

Brain: "I totally am. Grow some scales and take your depression like a dragon."

Me (smiles): "'Dragon' is a way better metaphor for that than 'man'."

Brain: "Yeah it is -- hey! Stop with that smiling! You're scheduled for some depression here!"

Me: "Sorry. Taking it like a dragon. I'm just gonna fly around in here. Wheee!"

Brain: "Dammit. Don't think you're off the hook here! DEPRESSION WAITS."

Me: "Lalalala can't hear you, too busy breathing fire."

Comments

[rowyn]

Have you been practicing being a dragon again, dear sir? You used to be one quite regularly, I recall. :)

And thank you for your kind words, too!

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I have always felt ... something between kinship and empathy ... for the dragon voiced by Sean Connery in Dragonheart. You know this well; he is in the artwork you did that is featured on the photo-frame above my desk.

That empathy was recently reinforced by his keen awareness that he is the last of his kind. My life has changed much, as you know, and what we now call "stoic" is a useful approach, though Marcus Aurelius actually studied Stoicism which has little to do with our modern use of the word.

Nevertheless, you can see prefiguring of our modern use of stoicism in several of the quotes above.

As an aside, the only person I know who professes to be of the original Stoic faith, as practiced millennia ago, was ferocious in his attacks on me. That sort of thing doesn't happen often (I have readers who were once trolls; you might remember the occasion which also involved dragons), but this case was a situation I could do little to repair.

==============/ Keith DeHavelle