Friday Calm: Feeling Blue

Feeling blue—

My mother used to enjoy having “mad days,” when she could be just plain old mad at everything and everyone.  She found them very satisfying.

And I can see that “blue days,” days of feeling blue, can be a pleasure too—when the blue is this, luring and deep and with a little boat.

At the meditation retreat I went to in February, one of the other participants said wisely “sadness is our birthright.”  And after a day of silence, reflection, nurturing, sadness had welled up, profoundly, and had come to seem a privilege, a gift.  Not something to be avoided, but something to be cherished.  An important part of being.

If the choice, though, is to escape the blues, the Huffington Post suggests these mood-enhancing foods:

oranges and papaya (for their colors too)

salmon (fish oil)

saffron (known in tradition Persian medicine and Tibetan healing)

chocolate

St. John’s wort

whole wheat English muffin with jam (simple and complex carbs)

And some cheering activities can be found here.

But if, with me, you want simply to be with blue, that blue, the blue that becomes us, the blue that we become, here is a poem to keep us there on this blue Friday.

In a Net of Blue and Gold

When the moored boat lifts, for its moment,


out of the water like a small cloud—


this is when I understand.


It floats there, defying the stillness to break,


its white hull doubled on the surface smooth as glass.


A minor miracle, utterly purposeless.


Even the bird on the bow-line takes it in stride,


barely shifting his weight before resuming


whatever musing it is birds do;


and the fish continue their placid, midday


truce with the world, suspended a few feet below.


I catch their gleam, the jeweled, reflecting scales,


small dragons guarding common enough treasure.


And wonder how, bound to each other as we are


in a net of blue and gold,


We fail so often, in such ordinary ways.

—Jane Hirshfield

From: Of Gravity & Angels, Wesleyan University Press, 1988

image:  Collage Art (Yehuda Edri)