Plus ça change...

Well, well—time to dust off the high school French, which I did by consulting, as always, Wikipedia. So here it is: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Or I suppose I could tax my brains a bit and figure out who said—in Latin—that there is nothing new under the sun.

Certainly not the Caribbean sun, shining so brightly on tourists and dropping conveniently away when it’s time to do what we do very well down here.

Smuggling.

Here’s how it works. We send up the drugs. You send down the guns.

That white powder that isn’t talc but is occasionally mixed with it has to come through somewhere. It used to be Mexico, but then things got a little hot up there. So the game changed to Puerto Rico, which famously, in the words of an early 20^th century US Supreme Court decision, is not the United States but “pertains” to the United States. (Anybody up there who can explain that, please give me a call. Been wondering for years….) In other words, no customs. If you can get the drugs in, you can send them in any aircraft, cargo container, or package through the US mail or FedEx.

So the drug traffickers have recreated the Middle Passage, though in this case it’s South America to the Caribbean, not Africa, and now it drugs, not slaves. But don’t imagine that it was Sam Walton who dreamed up logistics, though he did further it a bit. Nobody loves an empty ship.

And here, I take a deep breath and concede—maybe—a point to the NRA. “Outlaw guns and then only the outlaws will have guns!” they cry. (Nice turn of phrase, hunh? Great little marketing slogan….) Because Puerto Rico has probably the strictest laws in the nation about guns.

For one thing, they’re not considered a right. But let the Orlando Sentinel tell the story:

Buying a gun legally in Puerto Rico takes six to 18 months to complete paperwork and convince a police board that the applicant needs a gun. Puerto Rico does not consider gun ownership a right, said Edgardo Nieves, Rossello's spokesman.

By comparison, Florida residents only need to turn to a flea market, gun show or their newspaper's classified advertising section to buy without restriction.

And happily for everyone but the victims, it’s quite profitable. You buy a gun from Craig’s List for three hundred bucks, and you can sell it for three or four times as much on the streets of San Juan.

Well, with a deal like that, everybody wants in, right? So you’ve got your own little business started and established—a punto that is selling cocaine and heroin and god knows whatever else. And then some punk decides to move in on your territory. You gonna let that happen?

Fortunately, there are people who can help you. Sure, it costs, but money is not a problem. This is a business expense.

Now there used to be a little honor—the hit man killed in the punto, not stores or restaurants, or anywhere they could find the intended victim. So if you weren’t suicidal, you stayed away from the puntos. Now, if you’re not suicidal you stay home.

Two points. I may not be ready to concede the logic of “only the outlaws will have guns” to the NRA. It may be if the rest of the nation had our strict gun laws, there wouldn’t be the price difference that makes trafficking them into Puerto Rico so attractive. It might also be that there would be far fewer guns in the fifty states.

Second point—I read yesterday about the Mayors Against Illegal Guns. They are a significant group of 800 mayors; the mayors of Clairon, Clarks Summit, and Felton—to name three towns in Pennsylvania—have all signed a pledge. They’re gonna fight illegal guns, which make up the vast majority of weapons in Puerto Rico.

Well, we have a new mayor in San Juan, a lady who is busy trying to come up with the 800 million dollars that she needs to run the city. That’s daunting.

But what about the old mayor? The guy that put up all the signs announcing the projects that never got the money to get done? He’d been around for 12 years; in that time, why hadn’t he signed on? The group, by the way, is headed by the mayors of New York City and Boston. So they found the time…..

I’ve written about two of the three ingredients in this explosive stew. Here’s the third…

…money.

Lexapro 20mg PO qd

If I had Internet, I could tell you.

Some guy—Robert Whitaker, I think, and how did we live without Google?—wrote a book about the drug industry and the explosion of mental diseases. His thesis went something like this—for most diseases, the incidence rate drops as new drugs are developed, patients are treated, and presumably cured. But ever since Prozac, we’ve had a spate of new antidepressants, and the rate of depression has…

…skyrocketed.

So what’s going on?

I know all about this because Eric is writing a blog for Psychology Today. He sent me a link for the book, as well as a quote from a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan, who says that exercise is at least as good as antidepressants in the treatment of major depression.

Oh yeah?

I did my three-mile walk today at 8 AM—I’m rigorous about doing it. I listened to the first two string quartets of Brahms—my walk time is also music time. I came home, tried to get down to work, and couldn’t.

I hadn’t taken my Lexapro.

Little things began to annoy me. The damn Internet connection is down again. I tried to write a post. My mood is apparent in the first line—“It’s 2500 bucks of sheer fucking frustration.” (I was writing about my Zen MacBook Pro….) I wasted time rereading some old posts. I began to wonder whether it was worth it all.

Cousin Brian popped into my mind. His words: I said to myself over and over as I read, "he's so brave." You hold nothing back: Franny's character, her love, her pepper, John's stoicism, the terrible tensions between you and Eric, your own utter devotion to Fran, your struggles with depression before, during, and after...it's remarkable.

Yeah? Well, this morning I wasn’t feeling so brave. I was feeling pissed. And sorry for myself. Why has my life been such a fucking struggle? Why have I had to fight all my goddam life? The titanic struggle with the cello, the battle with depression, coming out, moving to a land where I’ll always be a stranger / visitor. What the fuck have I NOT had to do?

Shit!

Right. So then I got mad at Eric. Fuck you, you mental health experts, I raged! Have you ever been so far gone that you felt your thoughts turn to voices? Have you ever been, as I once was, in a bus sitting in front of a deranged street person. The guy was furiously snarling obscenities at me—“you mother-fucking asshole. You fucking think you’re so great… Pussy! Cock-sucker!”

And I didn’t move away.

Why?

Because I wasn’t entirely sure that it was the guy behind me.

It might have been me, pouring out that venom.

So it’s easy for you guys, the experts, to talk clinically and analytically about antidepressants and the rates of major depression. Sit in a dark room at 3 AM and struggle, as I once did, through a ravishingly beautiful amen of Monteverdi.

And have that be the one thin thread that ties you still to life.

At some point in the morning, it became clear.

ONE day without my Lexapro is enough to start me off on the slide to despair, darkness, death.

Well, I am rigorous, too, about going to the shrink. And I had gone last week, and gotten the prescription.

So I went to CVS.

I took the Lexapro one hour ago.

I can now write. I am no longer angry at Eric. I know what I will do today. I have a to-do list, and will work my way through most of it. What I don’t do today, I will do tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow I will walk and listen to music and contemplate the sea. That will make me feel better.

I will also reach for the one thing that apparently means life or death. 

Lexapro, 20 mg. PO QD.