I haven't cried in a good long while, I think it's time for some fresh sobbing. I wouldn't say that I cry easily or don't cry easily, on the bell curve of human weeping frequency I would probably fall somewhere near the median. I like to mix it up a bit when it comes to crying, be unpredictable, like crying at unexpected things while remaining dry-eyed in the usual crying situations. Some people cry at the slightest provocation, and others usually resent those people in some fundamental way, feeling such commonplace tears cheapen the significance of crying for the rest of us, devalue the crying currency. Mothers do this obviously, which is reason number five hundred and something why mothers are a big problem. If you cry I swear I am going to hang up. I mean it.

Some people never cry, which for some reason in our culture requires a special explanation. People who don't cry feel called upon to justify or defend their lack of crying, they usually volunteer such justifications without being asked. And if these non-crying types do cry, their tears take on overwhelming significance, their rare tears are burdened with meaning and become astonishing spectacle, like a total eclipse of the sun. If you see someone like that crying, you immediately assume something truly terrible has happened.

Crying can feel really good. I recommend periodic blubbering to anyone who can muster it. In these pedestrian times, life is pretty stingy about providing opportunities for emotional release. The thrust of modern living is to reduce the emotional landscape to blighted flatness. When a sappy movie or a beloved song sets you off I say let the bawling commence, don't fight it. Let those tears cleanse your mind of baneful emotional poisons and noxious leftover feelings. It's like a bracing facial enema! Don't pule or whimper, that just pisses everyone off and won't be cathartic. Either shut up or really let it go.

A few years ago, in the depressive aftermath of a painful breakup, I found myself sobbing all the time, a daily occurrence. Great heaving eruptions, frightening in their intensity. It was bad. I cried myself to sleep, I cried upon awakening. I cried while eating. All new experiences for me, this prodigal weeping. I curled up in a ball and cried. I stared out the window and cried. I walked the streets and began to cry and stopped caring who saw me. I would say, in retrospect, that this amount and frequency of crying was probably counterproductive. Crying so much made me dehydrated, and a few times I suffered agonizing leg cramps in the middle of the night. These were so painful and sudden they made me cry.