Martha Wiseman

Word Count 436

I.

“Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time,” says Ron Padgett in a poem called “How to Be Perfect.”

The implication is that you could go crazy a little, or you could go crazy every once in a while. Not a great idea in either case, depending on your definition of “crazy.”

You tell me that you’re cracking up, joining others who have cracked up, lost it, gone crazy, heard the angels, or the devils, or God. Who have despaired because of the state of the world, or their marriage, or their ability to go on. Because things aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Because they have cracked all their eggs in one basket.

On your ship of fools, are they cracking down on your too-fancy flights? I doubt there is any smooth sailing.

I’m worried about you. I wish you were laughing, seriously.

II.

Our friend cracks me up, a wholly different situation. Far more acceptable. Even riotous. She is, our friend, very funny.

But there is nothing funny about your deep-end dive, from which you have been fished out, sputtering and flailing.

We used to call some crack-ups “nervous breakdowns.” What is up, and what is down? Or, rather, who is up and who is down?

III.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, from its birth to its current reincarnation, would have no truck with all these loose terms. It must order the disorders. Categorize the disordered. Insurance companies depend heavily on the DSM for coding the various states of unsettledness and affliction. Our genetic codes and our codes of behavior, sound or misapplied, might be translated into a code linked to money paid out or withheld. The algorithms win.

You say your crack-up makes you think of Humpty-Dumpty, which is not particularly hopeful, because all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.... But it is not folly to hope. Folly was an old word for madness. It would be mad not to hope.

I too have feared cracking up, so fragile did I believe I was. Broken already, I thought. Shattered, maybe. I appear to have found the kind of glue that holds. So will you. Once found, it and you and I can be found again.

IV.

Think of kintsugi, the Japanese art of “golden repair.” The cracked vessel is repaired so that the break is still apparent; the history of the crack and the rejoining must be acknowledged, even celebrated. The imperfections mark the real.

Do not hide your cracks. Cherish the repair. See the balance of up and down—in moderation.

Now, make me laugh.

Martha grew up in both New York and North Carolina. She has been an acting student, a dancer and choreographer, and an editor. She retired in 2020 from her position teaching literature and writing in the English Department and running the writing center at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.