FEED A SPRING FEVER, STARVE A FUNK

Repeat after me: If you´re having a zip-a-dee-doo-dah day, I don´t want any part of it. If you´re feeling light-hearted and have a spring in your step, put an egg in your shoe and beat it. If you´re whistling while you work, scram.

This is for those of us still feeling like a sub-zero crankcase. Call it what you like: seasonal affective disorder, spring fever, the blues, the blahs, the blow-me-downs.

It´s FUNK.

Last week I told my housemate to beware, funk was on the way. Having had experience as an occasional funkette, she did the right thing and stepped up on the curb to let my melancholy parade pass by. When my funk marches, it´s like a giant, half-inflated cartoon character, dragged along on frazzled towlines by runamok clowns. She knows she is the lone spectator at the Macy´s parade and here I come: a lagging, sagging pooh bear, scudding down a rain-soaked avenue on his nose.

Funk is on the move. There is nothing to be done as a witness except step aside, and let the hissing balloon fizzle along the avenue.

This brings us to the Code Of Conduct for the funk-stricken. Yes, there are even politically correct protocols for being an Old Poop.

Don´t deny yourself your despair. It is yours. You own it, you deserve it, you worked hard for it. It is not something to be cured, anymore than one searches for a cure for happiness. Never forget that great happenings have found their way into history via Funk. Most artists, musicians, writers, statesmen and I think the guy who gave us 2000 Flushes have profited, ultimately, from the Old Poop mindset.

Never try to analyze, or in any way define the origin or course of your Funk while you´re in it. Dr. Phil might say: "not while it is in you," but we know pop-med smoke & mirrors when we see them. You walked into it, and you will walk out. Period.

NEVER, no matter who suggests it, try to "snap out of it." Resisting the tide of Funk is like building a sandcastle below the high-water mark. No chance. Just let it be, paddle around in the Funkweed and it will recede, leaving you beached again on better days.

Funk is inexorable, gravitational sludge. Funk is mind lava, and the landscape in every human cranium holds a volcano or two. It´s not astrological mischief, offbeat bio-rhythms or Satanic intermissions. It is the Siamese twin of Joy, joined indivisibly at the temporal bone, and will not be denied.

Funk cannot be fixed, either by you or those around you who might offer some well-intentioned, stiff upper-lipped inanities: Things could NOT be worse. You don´t WANT to look on the bright side. You will cheer up when you´re good and READY to cheer up.

It will stop when it stops. And, it will stop. Like any other produce in life´s garden, it has an expiration date and will die a natural death when you harvest it, unless you rototill your garden with a snow shovel (uh … we´ll save that perennial blight for another time).

Funk is short-lived by nature, but while it´s here, we have to welcome it as an adversarial ally. First, here are some warning signs of its onset:

Do you find yourself spending more than 5 minutes before a mirror without performing a hygienic function? Be prepared.

Are you using your breakfast table time looking for the symbolism in spontaneous food choreography? Do you see the floating branflakes as lifeboats escaping the last sinking slice of Titanic banana? Stand by.

Have you retrieved your Iron Butterfly record album from the closet archives, and as the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida rock of ages begins skipping, you sit there counting the skips, convinced at skip number 365 and 1/4 that yes, you´ve wasted the entire last year of your life, one day at a time? Get ready.

Did you yell at the dog for interrupting your conversation with a houseplant? Watch out.

It´s Funk time.

You may have other signs all your own, but they all have a common denominator. To this end, let´s play out the metaphor and look at our Funk in human form as our boorish, wayward Uncle. He´s just landed on the front stoop.

Knock-knock.

It may be a thud-thud, but you get up and let him in. If you don´t, he´ll climb through the window.

There he stands, your estranged, uninvited Uncle Funk, dripping wet, wearing a retrospective suit, carrying introspective luggage, babbling circumspective excuses, drunk with doom and needing a couch for the night.

Before you can summon the grace to offer him temporary room and board, (family IS family) he has broken the pole lamp, muddied the carpet, belched through dinner, drawn the shades, dirtied all your towels and passed out on the sofa, where he´ll spend the night alternately eating all your munchies and blasting the TV, watching old home-movie videos until sunrise.

Come morning, that´s where you´ll find him, wearing your pajamas, sitting on the dog, drinking your last cup of coffee and half-heartedly reading the "Houses For Rent" section of last week´s classified ads.

"Any minute now, something will turn up sure," says your Uncle Funk, grinding his cigar into the candy dish.

Outside, a taxi pulls up and out steps your Aunt Joy.

She comes up the walk, her spring rolling pin in hand, here just in time to take her wintry man home.

Syndicated columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from the New Hampshire north country. Copyright 2010 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Used here with permission. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary internet links to this column at B. Elwin's website may be distributed without written permission.