I think I have probably convinced myself that I am a gloomy, grey weather lady; that mists and fog and eternal sunless mornings are the stuff of perfect days.  And maybe to an extent I am.  But I think my body actually needs the sunlight, and growing green things and balmy breezes every once in a while…because I tell you, I am starting to feel awfully grim, and not in a good way.

As a matter of fact, I was just reading over at Morbid Anatomy about “Blue Monday, The Most Depressing Day of the Year”.   She mentions that it was this past Monday, the 25th of January, but according to wikipedia, the  date falls on the third Monday of January, which would have made it not this past Monday, but the one before - January 18th.

They’ve even got a formula to calculate this date, using factors such as “weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action”, but a source notes that the equations “…fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms.”

Either way - this week or the week before, or heck… every day of this past month  - has seemed full to the brim of bleak melancholic moodiness, if you ask me.  2010, what happened to you??

Ah, well.  It doesn’t do to wallow.  Spring is around the corner (sort of), and hey, there’s plenty of interesting things going on.  For example, this month’s full moon is apparently a “Supermoon” , and according to astrologer Lynn Hayes, “It’s not only a powerful Moon astrologically, but it’s at perigee, meaning it’s at its closest proximity to the Earth.  This is why it is so big and beautiful, but it’s also more powerful now.” She goes on to say that ” This Full Moon will stoke the fires of our inner aggression and challenge us to direct that fire wisely.”

Hm.  I wonder what that means for excruciatingly passive aggressive folks, like myself??

I suppose until such a time as the land is restored to a state of verdancy and the flora and herbaceous things start to flourish again, I will immerse myself in the works of Margreit Smulders; her hauntingly elaborate tableaux are both  ethereal and lush…narcotic,  intoxicating.  Like a Baudelaire poem come to life.

Beauty

I am fair, O mortals! like a dream carved in stone,
And my breast where each one in turn has bruised himself
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
As eternal and silent as matter.

On a throne in the sky, a mysterious sphinx,
I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans;
I hate movement for it displaces lines,
And never do I weep and never do I laugh.

Poets, before my grandiose poses,
Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues,
Will consume their lives in austere study;

For I have, to enchant those submissive lovers,
Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal brightness!

— Charles Baudelaire