Whilst once inside a Warsaw tram, the lights inside the virtually empty carriage increased the darkness outside - I really did leave early. (The tram lights are visible from outside below, with a car in the upper left-hand corner of the road. A snow covered road side would have made everything even more unreal.)
The feeling disappeared as soon as I got down to work, but maybe that early feeling of isolation left a mark.
However, the days are getting longer and warm weather is melting the snow and ice, so why feel down? However, yesterday had an extremely dark morning and the longer days seemed further off, rather than coming nearer. My pleasure at the melting of the snow was completely negated by a feeling that it was just temporary and heavy winter would come again. Anyway, the ice on the pond was still 10cm thick and I couldn't imagine it would go. The feeling that spring was coming was just a depressing illusion.
I put on a soft rock CD to get some relaxing background music. The first LP was The Liverpool Scene's 'Bread on the Night', which I normally enjoy, but I just wasn't in the mood. It even contains 'Winter Poem' starting "See, the conquering hero, Winter, comes". It's not for winter depression, it even ends: "Writing this in summer, wondering where are the snows of yesterday". If you haven't got the feeling yet, I found the video on Andy Robert's website.
Click here for more Liverpool Scene videos. (I'm amazed to find all of these, as I thought the group was virtually unknown.)
It's strange how psychology works. I just was just thinking a few days ago how good this winter had been so far. Indeed, this was the second period of meltingly, warm weather, which have combined to avoid the monotony of last winter's continuous layer of snow and ice.
My mood had actually been diagnosed the day before, although I hadn't noticed it myself: I was told that I couldn't wait to get into the garden to do something. The problem seemed to be that the weather was getting my body prepared to do something, whilst my mind was telling me that it would be months before I would actually be able to do it.
The mood didn't completely disappear, but I got down to doing some work, albeit with reluctance. I did cut down some dead plants in the garden, pumped out lots of water from where it had melted and found that some daffodils were now starting to come through - the crocuses had started in November before the snow. Indeed, there was a reasonable number of other ground level plants starting to show life. I took the Christmas tree down, but left the other Christmas lights around the house and in the garden. Relief at the final vacuuming-up of fallen pine leaves - for the third time in a week - ameliorating the loss of the tree decorations. The music on the CD became less wearisome
Anyway, I cheered up a bit ... and then the darkness of night enfolded us once again .... in the middle of the afternoon.
I felt a bit better this morning. It was brighter and, although there was frost over night, it was getting warmer again and the new ice was melting. The next CD in the pile was an (old style) bluesy R&B collection - Bobby Bland, Charles Brown, Frankie Lee, so far: much better for my mood for some reason ... and then the temperature outside started slowly to rise ( from +1c to +2) and everything started to freeze again - honestly.
Still Frankie Lee is keeping me going and, well, I have written this, so it can't be that bad.
Just as I finish off, Jimmy Witherspoon comes on - "I've heard the news, there's good rocking tonight": great up-beat rocking sound! I'll not give further links for the music this time, otherwise I'll never stop.
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