Thomas Fuller likes Fellini

Yesterday the mountains were getting me down. Too many of them were too high, too imposing, and the fact that they were crowned in white with new snow imbued them with even greater majesty.
I was small, a speck in the immensity, and the mountains were grand.
I told my therapist I was depressed. I think I used the word, "overwhelmed."
She understood perfectly, suggesting that I take "an attitude of gentle understanding with yourself" rather than the pain pills or vodka I'd proscribed, yet without ruling these prescriptions out altogether either, which makes her the brilliant therapist she is.
In the context of my immediate situation--having just published a book, having hosted book parties,having had the beginnings of some positive highbrow interest in the book from intelligent readers--perhaps I was having a sort of post-partum reaction to all that stimuli and now, in the wilds of Wyoming, I'd been thrown back on my own resources and found them...less than I'd thought?
My therapist suggested I pamper myself a bit, relax and enjoy my weakness and watch my thinking in regard to the mountain, "watch it and watch it and see what will happen, " she said.
Last night I watched "Fellini's Roma" with Lea Ann.
There's a scene in the film in which Fellini's fictional film crew accompanies an archeological dig under the modern city and accidentally come across an ancient chamber. In the chamber is a magnificent wall-painting, portraying what is presumably a scene of citizens of ancient Rome. The wall-painting is perfectly preserved, thousands of years old, sealed in a kind of beautiful eternity in the depths of the classical world.
"It's as if they're looking at us," one of the workers says of the painted people.
In the next scene, a moment or two after the discovery of the ancient chamber and wall-painting, the air from the present world begins to penetrate the newly discovered catacomb and the wall painting begins to radically change. The colors run from the faces, the features lose their perfectly fresh ancient identities, and the past is ruined forever.
When I woke up this morning and looked out at the mountains, the mountains were just mountains.