Flash In The Pantry: Serotonin Reuptake by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

1.

In my memoir, I discuss sea lions. Sea lions lack subtlety. They never suffer from depression. Even when they’re thrown off an ice flow by a killer whale and their offspring are eaten, they never get blue, never suffer hate or thirst for vengeance—that’s not the way they’re made.

2.

On the glass table near my cruise ship cabin’s window, I lay out my thirteen pills on top of a brochure for shore excursions. Thirteen pills—the number seems lucky. There’s my anti-depressant, the pill to lower my blood uric acid so I won’t suffer from gout (the rich man’s malady), my baby aspirin, my boner pill.

3.

We pulled up to Yawzi Point, where the victims of Yaws had been quarantined by their ungrateful masters. The fat girl told us that the sign at the head of the point read Go No Further.

4.

My memoir is full of emotion. It has depth. I sometimes suffer depression and have many notes about how depression gets one in touch with one’s soul. However, if I had my choice, I would forego depression entirely.

5.

That sign now hangs on the wall of a Copenhagen museum. The souls of those dead slaves reside there, disfigured by the sun and hunger, toil and illness. Scandinavia is no longer a utopia, as the past merges with the present and the future. The fat girl shoves pastries into her pie hole.

6.

A theological mystery: does serotonin act in God’s mind the way it acts in ours? Was He the first to understand the concept of the inhibition of serotonin reuptake?

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