Bathers by a Brook

Imagining a serene day by a woodland waterway

Creatures stir and humans slumber when bells ring six o’clock over an ivy-clad cluster of red-brick houses. Along a cobblestone alley pads a gray cat in search of a good square of sun. Robins sing from winged elms and magnolias. On the river, a sturgeon breaches, masked by a lingering patch of fog. Startling squirrels, the June edition of Buzzcut lands with a gentle thud on doorstep after doorstep, delivering close-cropped commentary on travel, style, history, and nature by writer, strategist, and late sleeper Zander Abranowicz. In lieu of a freshly pressed newspaper, Buzzcut is best read in your browser or via the Substack app.

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Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer (1514) at The Met

I picture melancholy as a black dog. Once it arrives it doesn’t leave me for a moment, sometimes staying weeks. It rests by my chair and sleeps at the foot of my bed. It nuzzles against my pantleg at parties, shadows me while I take out the trash, and waits by the pool when I’m swimming laps. Then one day I wake up and it’s gone.

The idea of a black dog as an avatar for gloom might be as old as the 23,000-year-old alliance between canis lupus and homo sapiens. It trots through history from ancient Egypt, where a jackal-headed deity named Anubis lorded over the dead, across ancient Greece, where Hecate, goddess of the underworld, assumed the form of a hound, through the European Middle Ages, with its superstitions of dogs as agents of the devil, and into the engravings of Albrecht Dürer, letters of Samuel Johnson, and life of Winston Churchill: the black dog’s most famous master. Darkness is, in fact, woven into the very definition of melancholy. At its root are the Greek melanos, meaning “black” (think melanin) and khole, meaning “bile” (think cholera) in reference to the “humor” long believed to cause mental and physical ailments. These sorts of linguistic associations between the color black and all things negative are now being reconsidered, but that’s a subject for another time.

It’s bittersweet to see my black dog go. Setting aside its dark mythology and etymology, I see melancholy in a positive light. Here’s what I mean. I believe melancholy is merely a heightened sense that our shift on earth is very short. To lament life’s brevity, we must first love life, because we only mourn what we love. Melancholy is therefore just a signal you’re doing something right: it follows joy like Sunday morning follows Saturday night.

When the black dog overstays its welcome, however, it evolves into a different beast entirely: depression. Depression is less lovable than melancholy, and more difficult to control. We all have idiosyncratic strategies for keeping that beast at bay — “at bay” appropriately derived from the Greek bauzein, “to bark,” for the unique howl of a dog that’s confronted a hunted animal. Hearing birds in springtime; tending our garden; calling friends and family; cycling; visiting museums and historic homes; collecting images from the internet like digital butterflies pinned to a digital board; taking medication (as prescribed). These are a few pillars in a whole parthenon of ways I keep my head straight. I’m sure you have your own. May they serve you well.

In Comfort Stories, I offer one more. These fictional scenes for meditation imagine ambient, mundane worlds with little to no narrative. They are verbal paintings with a dual purpose: helping me suspend what Henry James called “the ordeal of consciousness” through the act of writing, and (it is my hope) helping you do the same through the act of reading. So brew your Calm tea by Sounds and Moodflower, play A Story of Forest and Water by Takashi Kokubo (1993), and escape into the wilderness — with or without a black dog by your side.

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Comfort Story

A fictional scene for meditation

Bathers by a Brook

Woodland Pool, June 20 by William Abranowicz (2013) from Mianus River Gorge (2016), which notes: “Spring-fed woodland pools are cold water refuges for animals sensitive to heat, such as brook trout and the two-line salamander”

It is early and there are herds of white-tail deer in the meadows and agricultural fields. They monitor the progress of your car. The road is still in shadow but the ridgelines are aglow, and the sun is already burning away the clouds hiding in tributary valleys, the geologic progeny of the great fold you follow. Conifers dominate the hillsides, but it is spring and groves of deciduous green make their stand as well, preferring one season of glory to an entire year of modesty. 

A waterway drains in the opposite direction, toward the creek you crossed earlier, which in turn feeds a reservoir that waters a city. Your companion traces the morning blur, raising a thermos to drink now and again. The radio is off. A touch of manure colors the breeze entering the cabin with a pleasing drone. The trees inch closer to the road on both sides, and the road ends. 

Silence reigns when you turn your key, save a lonely birdsong in the distance. You grab packs and a canvas bag, skirting the rusty gate to meet the trail. The texture underfoot softens, your steps cushioned by decaying organic matter. Avoiding slick root systems and delicate moss, you proceed up the path. Your car disappears, and with it the last manufactured thing in sight. Everything is coated in dew. Even the soundscape is wet: crystalline, dripping, unknowable.

It is dim like a cathedral and as in all sacred spaces you are dwarfed by the scale of things, ants at the ankles of giants. Alien forms emerge: orange fungi decorating rotten wood; burls lodged in spruce trees like the half-digested feasts of giant snakes; opaque nectar oozing from a sugar maple trapping the insects that toil up and down its wrinkled trunk. Streams pulse through the landscape. You avoid these twinkling arteries every few paces to keep your shoes and socks dry.

The trail converges with a brook. It flows nicely, but stays well within its banks. The sound of water prevents conversation. You walk quietly, left, right, left, right, gradually uphill. A glade opens between the woods and the water. The ground there is padded with hemlock needles. As if waiting for your entrance, the sun crests the canopy, sending dappled light everywhere. It hits your face and you pause, basking like a tulip, thinking spring is especially welcome in places that endure harsh winters. Removing a wool blanket, you lay it out on earth that was just a few months ago buried under many feet of snow. Your companion sheds their sweater and reclines on the blanket. You drop books and a glass bottle beside them.

With a knife and a bag you enter the forest and locate a fallen birch, slicing a thick sheet of bark. This you place in the bag, along with dry sticks. Your entrance had silenced all life in earshot, but by the time you make your way back you notice birdsongs reemerging. So seldom do people visit this place, the animals here need more time than most to acclimate to your presence. The honey-throated call of a cardinal signals you are welcome, for a time.

Between the clearing and the brook is a shelf of lichen-wrapped shale. One or two footholds down is a narrow beach matted with flat river stones that descends into a pool fed by streams navigating channels worn into the rock. It is impossibly clear, the bottom fully visible. You fill the bag with stones. There is a spotted salamander under one. You study its glossy black flesh, dotted with yellow, then return the stone, granting the privacy it deserves.

Up on the shelf you trace a circle and brush away debris. Along the perimeter you build a small wall with the stones, a miniature version of the exquisite ones shepherds built in the surrounding country in centuries past, when vast swaths of the region were cleared for grazing. It’s said local landowners would place a bottle of whiskey at some point in the distance so the workers would construct the walls in the straightest line possible, thereby hastening their reward. The stones bake in the sun, losing their distinctive grain. In the center you set strips of bark and build a teepee of twigs over them. Around that you fashion a larger teepee. You strike a match and poke it into the center, which catches, smoking until flame appears with a pop. The inner teepee collapses into itself as intended, then the outer one. You feed the growing nucleus of embers, then lean back and watch the self-sustaining system burn and crackle, fueled by currents of oxygen swept up from the flowing water. Your companion delivers more fuel, bigger pieces now that the coals are glowing hot and bright. The smoke drifts up, drawing columns from thin air. 

The forest is awake now, but speaks in whispers. Your companion undresses and glides into the cold water. Now the water sits just above their waist. They turn back grinning, face in profile. Pausing, they weave their hands under the surface as if mesmerized by the clarity, noting the way liquid feels thicker when it’s cold. Finally they dive forward, swimming deep, their form vivid and graceful in motion, up the opposing bank, emerging with a laughing gasp and settling onto a boulder smoothed by glaciers a very long time ago.

You leave your clothes in a pile and step across the stones into the water. It is bitter but you persist, knowing the best way to meet cold is without hesitation. You sink below and float there, sensing every cell peppered with stimulation, as if exposed to an electric current. Before long you paddle over to join your companion. The warmth quickly evaporates what water clings to you, and smooths the goosebumps wrought by the cold. You inhale the mineral scent of the brook and it seems to reach regions of your lungs rarely accessed. You are two figures in repose, minds purged of errant thoughts, leaving only a solitary tether to the precise and concrete present. 

The other’s head rests on your chest. Breathing gently, they doze off. There at the edge, you gaze up at the trees. You picture constructing a home here. Light pine planks appear beneath you, warm against your back, extending into a modest deck supported by stone on one end and stilts descending into the pool on the other. A wooden frame materializes upward from the four corners of the platform, linked by cross-beams. Walls of the same wood slide down, and an aluminum roof — the type that makes a beautiful racket during a storm — slides across the sky. For a moment you’re bathed in darkness but soon vast windows and skylights open in the walls and ceiling, so perfectly unblemished it’s as if there’s no membrane between the enclosure and its environment. You rest in this luminous, spartan room, perfumed by wood and chlorophyll and woodsmoke.

Your companion stirs and the structure vanishes. You rise together and return to the pool, splashing to the beach and climbing up to the blanket. The towels have been sitting folded, toasting. You wrap your companion and then yourself. The fire has died down, but it’s easily revived. You sit in its radius of heat. Your companion joins you and passes you a stainless steel cup of water. You sit by the fire a while, cocooned by the elements. Back on the blanket it’s your turn to nap. You drift into dreamless sleep, the kind that usually comes on the heels of a long flight and a good shower, in a clean hotel bed somewhere new.

You’re awoken by droplets softly drumming against your body. Opening your eyes it’s as if the world has been rendered in black and white. Thunderheads have invaded the sky, and as you both gather your possessions the brook is raked with rain that falls harder now, making a wonderful noise. You dress with urgency. The woods shudder in the wind and leaves are shaken from branches, drifting and settling with their pale underbellies exposed on the pool’s broken plane. As you leave the glade there’s a flash and a magisterial roll of thunder that echoes through the hills. You’re filled with primal exhilaration as the rain starts to fall in even heavier sheets. Barefoot holding your shoes, the two of you run the trail in great strides, laughing, drenched, as thunder growls from the blackened sky.

The car appears and you fish for keys. Your shirts are plastered to your bodies but there is no chill to the downpour, the storm’s bark worse than its bite. You climb in and shut the doors, instantly immersed in a muffled acoustic atmosphere. You drive out the way you came, soaked and smiling. Along the road the brook swells, lashing at its banks. A hot shower awaits.

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Strip Mall Dining in Central Virginia

A review of local fare

Passage to India

Tucked in the illustriously named Buckingham Antique Mall and sandwiched between New Peking and Siam Paragon Thai Cuisine is Saheb Indian Bistro. It is fronted by a red pergola with bistro lighting (apropos the name) and announced to the parking lot with chunky red signage that illuminates after dark, as is common in strip mall dining establishments. The sky threatened storms on the evening we visited and the beige facade, partially obscured by scaffolding, was bathed in silver light. We entered to the left of the pergola and progressed down the entrance hallway, greeted by fragrant cardamom and cumin and mustard from the kitchen, sedate South Asian songs from the speakers, and the smiles of the staff. One table was occupied by an older couple on a midweek date. The man had a cell phone affixed to his belt, so I assume he was important. Another table was settled by five women, to whom the cosmopolitan cocktails were flowing fast and cold. One man dined alone. A regular, he seemed familiar with the waiters.

Two bottles of Kingfisher beer materialized on our table and we drank them like water, taking in our surroundings. Colorful umbrellas hung overhead, as if to shield the ceiling from a sudden, inverted monsoon. We waded into the extensive menus. Despite multiple trips to India and an addiction to dosas from Saravana Bhavan in Manhattan, I am, as a rule, struck by amnesia every time I face a menu at an Indian restaurant. Overwhelmed by options, I forget what I like, and naan and samosas remain my only islands of familiarity in a sea of curry, saag, and tandoori. What’s more, my condition worsens in direct relation to my hunger level. And we were hungry, in that semi-hallucinatory state that transforms anything in sight into a steaming leg of mutton. I was hearing voices: even the “Bowl of Yummy in my tummy Butter Chicken” on the Kids Menu spoke to me. Our friends arrived. They were also hungry.

Saheb Indian Bistro’s tagline is “Just add spice to your life!” and we heeded their call, ordering “Bullet Naan” (flatbreads with chilis and cilantro) and Chilly Paneer (cubes of paneer cheese deep fried and cooked with spring onions and chilis). A chilled yogurt sauce, plate of Chaat, and mango lassis cut the heat a little. Another round of Kingfishers cut the heat a little more. We talked about our personal sweat patterns from eating spice — forehead, under eyes, palms — all agreeing that over the lip is the most undignified of all. I ordered Saag Palak (spinach cooked with “chef special sauce” and spices) with lamb. It was served in a metal vessel alongside a foothill of basmati rice.

I chose well. I ate too much and retreated into a stupor, as if seeing the world through a film of ghee. And still there were plenty of leftovers. We packed them in styrofoam and walked out into the dark parking lot. Later that night, I saw a house fire in my dream.

Saheb Indian Bistro
13126 Midlothian Turnpike
Midlothian, VA 23113

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Something You Should Know

A sharp fact for your cocktail party quiver

In the Antebellum period, Brooks Brothers did a brisk business in “plantation clothing,” including suiting for masters, livery for “servants,” and cheap garments for slaves to wear at auction