February blues...

Serenity and security often seem to go hand in hand, and when they don't, or when both are markedly absent from my life,  I get to feeling that pale delicate shade of blue.  When I sink into this melancholic frame of mind, I do my best to bail the water of out my little sinking boat, so to speak.  Things that help are:
-A good Victorian novel.  They are the best, and this is because they still have that sense that the world can be put in order, somehow.  Rules still exist, and post-modernism has not entered into our world view yet.
- Tidying the bedroom, with fresh sheets and extra pillows, and warm blankets.
- Lighting candles.
- Warm fuzzy socks.
- A big cup of chamomile tea every day.

I am just now reading "The House of the Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  I have really not read many of the early American novels.  Somehow, too,  I have managed to avoid reading Moby Dick, although I am not too comfortable with that confession.   It was just not ever on any of my lit class lists.  Tsk.  Anyhow, I wait to see how this house fares.

Speaking of serenity -  my bedroom's buddha:

I want to be as serene as this reclining buddha:

Dreaming of a vision like this one.

...
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.” 

by William Wordsworth