fall/winter

Today, it rained. It rained a little, it rained a lot, but by 3:00 the sidewalks were caught in a dwarf deluge, the water steaming and lapping, obscured with millions of coin-shaped imperfections. A lingering group of students amassed at the school entrance, impatient. I walked home alone, on an empty street, with no umbrella, just me and the rain and clothes quickly giving way to cold saturation.

The rain dominates the streets, but as soon as it comes it goes, leaving a hemisphere of dampened sound and air in its' wake.

I love the rain. I spent my childhood in Swindon, which was consistently obscured by passing rainclouds. Of course, this is England. You can bet it rains everywhere. We also had a forest there. Have you ever been in a forest when it rains? There is no greater gift.

Seasonal Affective Disorder, a kind of depression (abreviated SAD, ) inflicts some people I know. In a breif description it's a major depressive disorder occuring in the winter months, sometimes extending into spring or fall. It comes with the rain and leaves with it, in our case. And it has a lot to do with light.

There is so little we know about the brain, so little that people care to notice. And a noticable percent (9%) in the northern US, compared to 1.5% in the south is compromising. It baffles me how something as small as a routine loss of light can inflict so many with anxiety and suicidal thoughts that may even lead to hospitalisation.

And it's true that we can relate all of it to serotonin, which produces healthy, happy minds.

It's possible to manipulate levels of serotonin and that's mildly unsettling. Bioscientists are working on unlocking the secrets to cell reproduction, and perhaps in my lifetime it will be possible to regrow limbs just like a fetus might. Biology is terrifying.

But, I digress.

My point is that while you'd assume something as routine as the changing of seasons leaves human minds unaffected, you'd be wrong.