Chapter Sixteen: Ode To Melancholy (~jinghan)
This semester I’m doing a placement with the In2Science program, mentoring in a primary school maths class for a couple of days a week. It’s my second placement and the students are doing some work on ratios – which, I soon found out, are hard to explain in a clear concise manner off the top of your head. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me, so I try explaining to this student, and then that student…
There is a boy who is working quietly on his own in the corner, and I come over to see how he is going. He’s managed to write something down for every question. “Do you mind if I have a look at your answer for question 8?” It’s a question the last group I was working with struggled to understand even after explanation. The student has done some really clever maths and I am genuinely impressed, but alas not what ratios exactly mean, so I set about explaining it as best as I can…
Then a notice a tear on his eye lash!
“Oh no! Are you okay? Are you sad because you worked hard on that question and it was wrong? I liked what you did it was very clever, this is just the way the ratios people want you to do the question.”
The boy is silent, but for his tears.
“Do you want to leave this for another day?”
He nods and says quietly that he is tired.
“Okay lets leave it for another day. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I don’t understand what happened… perhaps he was tired and to have gotten a maths question wrong was one too many things on the young child’s mind that day. As I head back to uni, I wish I knew what the child had been feeling, that I had the right things to say at the right times…
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It’s Tuesday afternoon and I’ve been going to bed too late and getting up early too many days in a row. I’m talking to a friend about something I’m thinking about trying.
“Don’t forget that you might not get in.”
He didn’t mean anything by it, just a gental reminder of the reality of life. And perhaps if I wasn’t so tired or feeling a little lonely after a long day it wouldn’t have fazed me… But not this time. Sadness wells up in my heart so quickly and almost undetectable. Before I even fully register the emotion a tear has formed just under my lashes and I’m surprised when a wetness runs down my cheek. I quickly turn away from my friend and brush it away, ashamed at my sudden emotion.
The sadness stays with me as I wait for the train, and as if the world was empathising – it begins to rain. The drip drop of rain all around me both inside and out.
Droplets of rain run down the other train windows in the carriage, but the one I stare out of is watery, sad but tearless. I’m unsure how socially acceptable crying in public is, so I stare at my glassy eyes in the reflection on the train window, my heart feeling heavy for no particular reason.
But despite that, I can’t drinking in the beauty of the rain. The way the lights outside become like beautiful stroaks of painted yellow and orange, broader and brighter than you would expect. The way the rain makes little kisses in the puddles that collect in the deep places. I feel like finding a small warm corner to curl up and weep quietly with the quiet consoling rain all around.
Then I remember:
“But when the melancholy fit shall fall,
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.”
Ode to Melancholy*, by John Keats: I learnt it back in year 12 when I was studying literature. Ah Keats, you knew something didn’t you? Something about the way the poetry of the world comes to life when melancholy fills you.
As I get off the train into the rain. A lady who is walking just infront of me stops to take cover under a shop eave. “Are you okay getting where you need to go?” I ask almost out of habit. With her big coat and drably wet hair (dyed pink) she seems like the sort that would be proud and offended that someone might think her in need, but when she turns around and speaks to me, I am pleasantly surprised by the sincere affection and gratitude in her voice. “I’ll be quite alright, I just need to get around the corner, not far. Thank you for asking though!” She puts a hand on my arm as she says this, a warm and comforting gesture, and I can’t help feeling a little less blue as I continue on my way home.
By now, I can’t help but revel in the sounds and smells of rain. In a book I read once, the author described: “What privacy it is to walk in the rain beneath the drip and crackle of your own umbrella.”** As I walk home I admire how perfectly she described it. Drip and crackle and the far off slip splash and pitter patter of rain on leaves, pools and rooftops. The smell of wet soil and growing things, subtle but sweet in the air. It’s like a painting and a symphony and more all at once; and not just infront of you, but under you and above you, around you and inside you too!
So when you are next feeling blue remember:
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or on the beauty of a rainy day….
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*Ode to Melancholy – by John Keets, click here for the full poem.
** Dinner at the homesick restaurant – by Anne Tyler