GAD

"I woke up this morning, oh yeah, my baby she gawn...
I woke up this morning, oh yeah, my baby she gawn...
She treated me baaad, yeah, she done me wrawng..."

Why do blues singers' chicks always leave during the night? What's that about? She brushes her teeth, puts on her silk pj's and then, as the good man starts snoring, she sneaks out of the house? Men usually leave after dinner: "Honey, I'm going to get some cigarettes.... "

But I'm with the blues singers in one respect. T. S. Eliot said that "April is the cruellest month.." I say "Morning is the cruelest time". Even if my baby is only gawn to the shower. It's in the morning that I feel the deepest effects of GAD - which my Oxford defines this as "go about from place to place for excitement or pleasure". But what I have in mind is the more clinical meaning. Generalized Anxiety Disorder. In the mornings I never, ever truly feel at peace or relaxed. And I mean "never"! There is always - sometimes at the back of my head, sometimes more in the forefront - a sense that the axe is about to fall. That something is askew in my world. That the pieces don't fit. Mind you, I can't resist a morning cup of java and that makes things worse. Caffeine, a powerful stimulant, will stir up my anxiety to new heights.

As the day goes by, my GAD improves. Especially on days when I do my 4 km's. Like I've already said many times, a long walk through the park - in any season - is just the best. And for the rest of the day my GAD recedes. I am certainly not a morose person; I like the company of others and most people would probably classify me as fairly outgoing. I work in a business that requires contact with lots of people and a often a good deal of *chutzpa*. No time for GAD during the time of hustle...

Then sometimes in the evening, watching TV , I realize my breathing is shallow and I feel on edge without knowing why and some of the anxiety comes creeping back. But far be it from me to "go for cigarettes". Just as a long walk is a great tonic for the mornings, so is playing my guitar while watching TV and annoying the crap out of my wife the perfect night cure. It's my electric that I practice, sans amp, so the noise factor is minimal. It's the combination of string plucking and inattention that my better half dislikes.

And then it's time for bed....falling asleep is never a problem. But I know that when I wake up, GAD may raise its ugly head again. It's just part of who Ah is.

If you read Camus or Kafka, certainly Dostoyevsky - they all had GAD. So does Woody Allen who has been gadding all the way to the bank for decades. Most Jewish people I know have GAD. I'm sure Charlie Parker had it - heroin would be a good way of numbing it. What we're talking about, really, is the psychic pain of everyday living. Defined as a psychiatric syndrome - but perhaps it's not quite a 'disease". I think it is a combined fear of death and fear of life. I fear death because I want to have enough time to accomplish my plans and goals but I fear life because it is so fleeting and fragile and unpredictable.

And one more thing: if I can trace my GAD to anything at all, it would be the forced departure from my homeland at the age of 15. It was an uprooting of such magnitude its effects linger on, 37 years later. And yet, as bad as the effects are, I am thankful for having spent these 37 years in freedom and I'm thankful for my rootless anxiety, for my GAD - for providing most of the inspiration behind my music.

Lest you feel this entry is complete downer, let me end with a few quotes (some from comedians, many of whom suffer from GAD)

Woody Allen: "I am at two with nature"
Woody Allen: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying"
Woody Allen: "Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable"
Anatole France: "A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance"
G.B.Shaw: "A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth"
Mel Brooks: "Humor is just another defense against the universe"
Garth Brooks: (yep, the country dude) "The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself"
.....and the best for last:
Dave Barry: "What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death"