Melancholy Thoughts

It is amazing how closely connected the mind and body are. Starting last night, I have felt my mood take a turn for the worse and low and behold, this morning I awakened with a sore throat. I went to work for the first half of the day and felt the depression inside of me combined with the onset of the beginnings of a sickness. Side note: Do you know why leaves change color in the fall? I didn't...I thought they were just dying. In reality, the tree is going into a kind of hibernation. It has turned off the chlorophyll (the food maker) in it's leaves and has started to live on it's reserves. The chlorophyll only works with sunlight and because the days are getting shorter, it can't do much of it's work anymore. So, the green leaves the leaves (tongue and mind twister) and the other colors are left. Cool huh? Back to my sickness. I felt a kind of turning in in my mind and my body as my body went into a survival mode before sickness. So, I left work after lunch and went home to nurse my hurting body and mind. While home I slept and read the rest of my book, The Scarlet Pimpernel. What a wonderful book! Anyway, I will finish this post with a couple of quotes from it. Being sick is really interesting. I find that I feel the world is crashing in on me when I'm sick and that not only is my body not right but nothing else in my life is either. It is a weird sensation to have these feelings on the inside and have everything normal around you. The pretty and happy and good in the world around you seem to taunt the fact that not everything is right inside of you. I have felt this also during my favorite season...autumn...hmmm... For some reason for me there is kind of sadness in autumn. The fall had always meant the stress of a new school year and that stress seemed such a stark contrast to the beauty of the changing scenery around me. The beautiful colors and the feel of the air seemed to mock my need to spend time in a cold, gray classroom or library. Here's a quote..."She was in the mood [melancholy] when the sea has a saddening effect upon the nerves. It is only when we are very happy, that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it roll, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys." Amen I say to that...the sea and other things as majestic and large, as only nature can offer, allow for a large void in which either our joys or sorrows must expand in order to fill. Luckily for now, I am healthy enough in spirit to be able to discern the virus' unrighteous conspiracy and put it's attack on my body and mind at bay with orange juice and good reading respectively. For a final and fun quote having nothing to do with the above thoughts and everything to do with the other thoughts that further cloud my already overcast day, I offer the discription of the heroine in the story I've read and of many other females in their quest for the love of a good man, myself not discluded. " A woman's heart is such a complex problem--the owner therof is often most incompetent to find the solution of this puzzle."