Midwinter Blues

I lay in bed this morning, and thought: "Oh pooh, I have appointments, and yoga that require me to be in the world, just when I don't want to be."
I had the choice of cancelling everything and staying put in bed, with the justification of 'well, everyone needs rest'. In reality, I feel low, and lethargic, and tired of fighting the cold, all for the sake of 'living a life'.
It's July, so here's the Big Sad, the Big Anxious, and the mid-winter blues. I long to be in Darwin, Mission Beach, Monkey Mia. Anywhere warm, tropical, with lots of sunlight. I want bright green, and white sand, and blue sky and ocean. I want to not be wrapped up to the eye-teeth in layers and layers of clothes until I feel I'm suffocating.
I want all my writing to be done, and not have to go back into it and fix all the dumb-ass mistakes.
Today, I want to be the Four of Swords, someone lying in their tomb.
Yeah, I know it's bad thinking. You know what, I don't have it in me to alter it today.
I'll mope along to yoga, because that's what I do. I'll eat food, because one must, I suppose. I'll read because what else is there? Because these are things that make up my life, and I don't know how to just sit and moulder away to nothing.
I know all the nutrition, and exercise, and change-my-thoughts stuff. I can do all that. No use telling me to 'get out for a walk and have an orange'. I'll likely do both today. They won't change in the inner essence of me that's craving sunlight, and warmth, and....well, preferably the ability to sit and not move, and not think.

Finding My Long Way Back To Poetry

http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com.au/

I've not written poetry much at all this year. I've been deep in memoir territory, and I feel dry, used up, a leaf in winter scraping on cold bitumen. So, I toddled over to my favourite poetry inspiration place and I'll try to do something with Brendan's prompt.

Knife through butter
to measure out half a cup
for this new recipe.

A good sliver off the Larsen Ice Shelf
loosing itself into the ocean.

Sugar weighed out into metal bowl,
white and silver.

Snow and ice gleaming,
deep within larimar-blue.

Crumbled almond meal,
the tang of vanilla essence.

Icebergs melting, salt biting deep,
the smell of krill
from a minke's mouth.

Apply heat.

The cake rises.
The land bares itself.
One more palatable than the other.
****

That felt like grinding dry concrete. But it's a start.