The above photograph is from my Limited Editions – Photographic Abstracts gallery. I have entitled it “This Way Darkly”. A play on the words of Shakespeare’s “Something wicked this way comes”. I couldn’t really tell you where my titles come from. They just pop into my head. But, this seems a good photo to accompany this piece on dark moods and recycling kindness.
Since I have yet to achieve total enlightenment, short by light years, I have a tendency to have dark moods every now and again. Some prefer to call these episodes depression and take Zoloft. I prefer to call them “dark moods” and work my way through them with extra exercise and more attention to my diet. Inhaling deeply of fresh mountain air is also very therapeutic.
When one of these moods sets in it’s no fun at all. Even though I live in beautifully forested mountains I sometimes can’t see the forest for the trees. Even though I try and go with the flow my emotions get so twisted up my flow is round and round in circles. Sometimes I just have to hitch up my bootstraps and wait it out. Sometimes a fellow traveler bails me out.
Recently, I had one of these nasty moods. It may have been some kind of post partum reaction to ending my five-month trip in Clementine. Maybe it was this very strange spring that has refused to come. I really don’t know for sure but whatever it was it knocked me right off my happy go lucky, optimistic perch. Silver linings were not forthcoming to my consciousness.
Just when I was ready to fling myself from my ground floor window my friend and sister, Karen, sent me an e-mail and signed off with “I care”. I cannot tell you why but those two simple words were like magic. The ugly mantle of my dark mood began to lift like the fog. It wasn’t long before I was back to being my Pollyanna self.
Not long after my bout with darkness another friend wrote to tell me she was having a devil of a time. Murphy was at her house and running riot. I decided to see if those two words could do for another what they had done for me. So, I replied ending my message with “I care”. And, guess what? They worked the same magic!
Another thing about these moods, I always seem to learn something, gain some new insight or just get a refresher course in things known but ignored. What came from this episode was a reminder how very powerful recycling can be.
©Kinsey Barnard Photography
