SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, is very real. I didn't fully appreciate the cause of mine until this fall when I spent the month of October in Eastend, Saskatchewan. I grew up in Winnipeg. Everyone talks about Winnipeg winters (I hate the derogatory term "Winterpeg"), but no one remembers anything but the cold. Most of them, whoever they are, haven't even been there. They're just nodding to a stereotype. Let's talk about Winnipeg sunshine instead. I fear it was the lack of it that triggered my mother's death. We bought a studio apartment for her just down the hall from my place but she lived there only 5 months. Toronto is very bleak in the winter. I really think my mother missed the sunshine. Well, so do I, and I didn't realize how much until now, until October, that is, when I walked every day for a month under a vast bowl of blue sky with that brilliant prairie sunshine pouring out of it, and I stored it up like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. Now, less than a month before the shortest day of the year, I am blearily starting to droop and mope. By January, when the days start getting longer, I will begin to brighten up. I wonder if my love of the light is the reason I love fireplaces so much, as I burn fossil fuel powered initially by the sun Too scientific for me. For several years a psychiatrist friend lent me a DayLight, a portable lamp about the size of a make-up mirror, that i sat and read in front of for half an hour before 9 o'clock every morning, from November to March. It helped, until my cataract lenses clouded over and I had to have them scraped. (ugh) Perhaps, a friend suggested, they had been blasted by the light. So this year I didn't use it. But this year I went to Saskatchewan, so I was okay. What will I do next year? I'm not the only one, of course. The Festival of Light, however and wherever it is celebrated, is people's response to the darkness over the centuries. We all light real or metaphorical candles to keep the darkness at bay. May the light shine upon you!

I was out of it yesterday, not only with the Sunday NYT but also with a wrenched arm and shoulder. Couldn't swim, though I tried but it hurt too much. Never got dressed. I did do some work. Have to justify my existence each day, after all. But no blog. You don't have to know all this, nor do you care. Writers are so arrogant. They think what they do each day matters. In addition to being a marvellous poet and arguably the best metricist of the 20th century, W.H. Auden was a witty, often profound, essayist. In one piece he was considering social workers and he wrote a great line I've never forgotten. "Social workers," Auden said, " say, 'We are put here on earth to help others. What others are here for, we don't know." I think that's true of writers' attitudes, too. I know what I'm here for - which is why I feel it so strongly when I don't do as much as I should do each day. That way of thinking, I fear, makes me very hard to live with, so I guess it's a good thing I don't live with anyone. I have to keep reminding myself that other people need recognition, too. That's why I keep taking soup and goodies to neighbours and try to remember birthdays and give jollies. Jollies was my father's word for little prezzies. A jolly is not really a present, it's just a little something to jolly life along. We all need jollies. Me too. I'm running low on power now. A bientôt.