{"id":77148,"date":"2014-09-23T14:45:46","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T18:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=77148"},"modified":"2014-09-23T14:32:53","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T18:32:53","slug":"mending-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/23\/mending-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Mending Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Broken_Fence_on_White_Hill_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1218674\"<\/a>

Photo: Nigel Mykura<\/p><\/div>\n

Colette once wrote that it\u2019s impossible to write about love while you\u2019re in it. (I\u2019m paraphrasing.) I think the same is true of depression, although for different reasons. Love is too euphoric; depression is too tedious. It is not dramatic, it is not romantic. It is boring\u2014to experience, to be around, to recollect. The rest of the time, when one is well, it is interesting only to the extent that a structurally unsound house is interesting to live in\u2014you don\u2019t think about it most of the time, and then occasionally you\u2019re reminded to be careful, or to shore it up. (I can\u2019t continue that metaphor because I have no idea how one goes about strengthening buildings. Mortar? Supports, probably.)<\/p>\n

In the house where we grew up, the garage had a series of long cracks running up the stucco of its back wall. No one ever fixed it, but we were told sternly not to play near that wall. Instead, I would climb about twenty feet up a nearby pine tree, crawl onto the roof of the garage, and read there, or sometimes just run up and down the shingled peak, although I wasn\u2019t habitually a physical risk-taker.<\/p>\n

The only times my state of mind worries me are those times when Elves<\/em> fails. Elves<\/em> is the one thing that can always make me laugh\u2014well, smile, anyway. The elves I mean are the ones in \u201cMending Wall,\u201d wherein Frost\u2019s speaker, walking the length of a crumbling fence with his hidebound neighbor, speculates\u00a0 about the forces that tear it down. \u201cI could say \u2018Elves\u2019 to him.\u201d I love the idea of someone saying \u201cElves\u201d to someone else; having the thought of it.<\/p>\n

When I would get sad and grim and joyless and my college boyfriend would see a cloud cross my face, he would sometimes lean over and whisper, \u201cElves.\u201d He would say it in a very stentorian way, often at the strangest moments\u2014on the Cyclone at Coney Island, or in the quiet car of a commuter train. It was always enough to jolly me out of myself for the moment. Often, just thinking it is enough. While that\u2019s in the world, we\u2019re okay, or we will be. <\/p>\n

\n

He only says, \u2018Good fences make good neighbors.\u2019
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
\u2018Why do they make good neighbors? Isn\u2019t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn\u2019t love a wall,
That wants it down.\u2019 I could say \u2018Elves\u2019 to him,
But it\u2019s not elves exactly, and I\u2019d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father\u2019s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, \u2018Good fences make good neighbors.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colette once wrote that it\u2019s impossible to write about love while you\u2019re in it. (I\u2019m paraphrasing.) I think the same is true of depression, although for different reasons. Love is too euphoric; depression is too tedious. It is not dramatic, it is not romantic. It is boring\u2014to experience, to be around, to recollect. The rest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[513,15403,15402,15404,12777,3110],"class_list":["post-77148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-depression","tag-elves","tag-fences","tag-mending-wall","tag-neighbors","tag-robert-frost"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSadie Stein on Robert Frost\u2019s Poem \u201cMending Wall\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On how it\u2019s impossible to write about love and depression while you\u2019re in it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/09\/23\/mending-wall\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mending Wall by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"September 23, 2014 \u2013 Colette once wrote that it\u2019s impossible to write about love while you\u2019re in it. 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