Current Mood Quotes

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.

It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.

With his current mood, Elizabeth realized, she was going to have to make her own opening. Lifting her eyes to his enigmatic golden ones, she said quietly, “Ian, have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?” Surprised by her grave question and her use of his name, Ian tried to ignore the jealousy that had been eating at him all night. “No,” he said, scrupulously keeping the curtness from his voice as he gazed down at her alluring face. “Why do you ask? Is there something you want?” Her gaze fell from his, and she nodded at his frilled white shirtfront. “What is it you want?” “You.

Hysterical laughter. Why did he keep hearing hysterical laughter? Fearghus opened one eye to stare at his two siblings. The were practically falling over each other they were laughing so hard. They woke him up from a sound sleep for this? "What?" His current mood wouldn't allow for this. And definitely wouldn't allow for him. Gwenvael choked out an answer. "She braided your hair, brother." "Like a horse's mane," his sister added.

Current mood: David Foster Wallace meets Amy Winehouse.

I’ve always believed that as an author, I do 50% of the work of storytelling, and the reader does the other 50%. There’s no way I can control the story you tell yourself from my book. Your own experiences, preferences, prejudices, mood at the moment, current events in your life, needs and wants influence how you read my every word.

The sheep are in a terrible mood today as Bailey attempts to usher them from one field to another. They have resisted prodding, swearing, and pushing, insisting that the grass in their current field is much nicer than the grass just on the other side of the gate in the low stone wall, no matter how much Bailey tries to persuade them otherwise.

The staying awake was a great self-sacrificaing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in a long Dostojevskyan conversations and drank one black coffee after another. It was sort of night typical of youth, the sort you only can look back on with shame and embarassment once you've grown up. But God knows, I must have grown up already by then, because I don't feel the slightest embarassment when I think back to it, just a terrible nostalgia.

It was written in London under the advancing shadow of the Second World War, and it may be that the apprehensionsof those years can be felt vibrating from time to time in its pages. The historian,concerned as he is with the most vital of all studies, is often more subject than herealizes to the electric currents of contemporary mood.

But in her current mood, small affronts were bundled with larger disappointments and became a body of evidence.

He wanted to ask again if she was all right, but in her current mood she’d go ballistic, because when you were tired and ragged, that’s what you did, lashed out at the person who was safe.

People say, when I complain of being less lively, less energetic, less high - spirited, "Well, now you're just like the rest of us," meaning, among other things to be reassuring. But I compare myself with my former self, not with the others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow. And I miss Saturn very much." An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison page 92, paragraph 1 sentence 2 -4 and paragraph 2

These women who perhaps even balk at the word survival and favor instead a far more fluctuant current: continuance.

She often thought of him as an accessory that matched with everything; some sort of magical mood ring that adapted to whatever persona she had currently filled.

If you want to be a real person living in the real world, the first thing you must do is get off the grid. Take the first brave step and delete your Facebook profile. After all, you surely wouldn’t want the words carved on your headstone to be: “I was registered with Facebook. I had 101 online friends (and I even knew a few of them). My current mood is: Sad.

If we want our worship, or attempts at worship, to mean anything, we have to strive to conform it to the nature and will of God, and not to the mood or taste of the [current] century.

But, oh, how sweet it was to love for once with the love of real life; for now he knew that nothing of what he had imagined to be love was real love, neither the turgid longing of the lonely youth, nor the passionate yearning of the dreamer, nor yet the nervous foreboding of the child. These were currents in the ocean of love, single reflections of its full light, fragments of love as the meteors rushing through space are splinters of a world--for that was love; a world complete in itself, fully rounded, vast, and orderly. It was no medley of confused sensations and moods rushing one upon another! Love was like nature, ever changing, ever renewing; no feeling died and no emotion withered without giving life to the seed of something still more perfect which was embedded in it.

When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar.

Despite the newness of the science and tentativeness of the conclusions that can currently be drawn, changing women's hormones changes women. And this is a big deal. Although we don't yet know that the pill does the research suggests that it probably has a hand in women's mate preferences, our sensitivity to smells, our relationship satisfaction, the functioning of our stress response, the activities of multiple neurotransmitter systems, the activity of multiple hormones, our moods, our persistence in difficult tasks, our ability to learn and remember and our sex drive. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Gilbert and George said: “But don’t you see? That’s how Bacon is. He is absolutely right to behave as he wants.” Not as he wants. As he has to behave. An artist must be open to the muse. The greater the artist, the more he is open to “cosmic currents.” He has to behave as he does. If he has “the courage to be an artist,” he is committed to behave as the mood possesses him. “That’s the man who booed Princess Margaret!” —the peasantry shrink back from his sulfurous glow.

When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar. You are also likely to be relatively casual and superficial in your thinking. When you feel strained, you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you also are less intuitive and less creative than usual.

He didn’t ask for very much from Regan, which was ideal, because she didn’t typically give very much. If they tired of each other, they simply didn’t speak. They were good at occupying each other’s spaces. She often thought of him as an accessory that matched with everything; some sort of magical mood ring that adapted to whatever persona she had currently filled.

A few days later, I found myself back in the cellar. But this time, I was involved in an activity way more fun than cataloging magic junk. “What happened to the promise of making out in castles?” I asked as Archer and I pulled back for a breather. I was leaning back against one of the shelves, my hands clutching Archer’s waist. Over his shoulder, there was a jar of eyeballs staring at me, and I nodded toward it. “Because, see, things like that? Kind of a mood killer.” He glanced at the jar and then turned back to me, waggling his eyebrows. “Really? I find it has the opposite effect.” Giggling, I elbowed him in the stomach and pushed myself off the shelf. “You’re sick.” He smiled and ducked his head to kiss me again, but I skirted around him. “Come on, Cross, we came down here for a reason, and it wasn’t fooling around.” Smirking, Archer folded his arms over his chest. “May not have been your reason, but-“ I cut him off. “No. Don’t distract me with your sexy talk. We need to search this place, and that spell Elodie did will only last so long.” Elodie had swooped into my body at the cellar door, doing a quick spell to unlock it. She hadn’t even looked at Archer, much less said anything. And the second the lock clicked open, she’d vanished. The smirk disappeared from Archer’s face, and he actually looked kind of sullen. “Are you honestly that bummed about not hooking up right now?” I teased. But he was deadly serious when he shook his head and said, “It’s not that. It’s Elodie.” “What about her?” Archer rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, Mercer. Maybe it’s that I’m not completely crazy about the ghost of my ex-girlfriend occasionally inhabiting the body of my current girlfriend.” I backed up another step and ran into another shelf. Something fell off and thunked against the dirt floor. “Whoa, I’m your girlfriend now?” Archer shrugged. “We’ve tried to kill each other, fought ghouls, and kissed a lot. I’m pretty sure we’re married in some cultures.” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Whatever. Look, the fact of the matter is, I don’t have any magic right now. Elodie does. If her occasionally using me as her puppet means that I have powers again, then I’m fine with it. And you should be, too. My body, my ghost, and all that.

Randy young couples in Naples don’t even bother with lovers’ lanes they simply park on any street and paste the windows with newspaper. A daughter with an encyclopaedic knowledge of current affairs is not something a Neapolitan father brags about. To ensure the undivided attentions of their partner some men prefer to paste the windows with the sports newspaper. Maybe that’s why La Gazzetta dello Sport is pink—to enhance the mood.

Whatever the evolutionary precursors of drug use are, a permanently “drug-free” human culture has yet to be discovered. Like music, language, art, and tool use, the pursuit of altered states of consciousness is a human universal. With access to few alternatives, Siberian shamans imbibe reindeer and human urine to maximize the psychedelic yield of Amanita muscaria mushrooms (the metabolite that is excreted may be stronger than the substance initially ingested); on nearly the opposite side of the world, New Zealanders party with untested “research chemicals” synthesized by Chinese chemists. Drug use spans time and culture. It is a rare human who has never taken a drug to alter her mood; statistically, it is non-users who are abnormal. Indeed, today, around two thirds of Americans over 12 have had at least one drink in the last year, and 1 in 5 are current smokers. (In the 1940s and ’50s, a whopping 67% of men smoked.) Among people ages 21 to 25, 60% have taken an illegal drug at least once—overwhelmingly marijuana—and 20% have taken one in the past month. Moreover, around half of us could suffer from physical withdrawal symptoms if denied our daily coffee. While Americans are relatively prodigious drug users—topping the charts in the use of many substances—we are far from alone in our psychoactive predilections.

What most people don’t realise is that as a salt, DNA is a natural conductor of electricity. It is extremely sensitive to electromagnetic waves. Even a slight shift in your mood will create enough of an environmental signal to trigger a response from your DNA. Likewise a negative or a positive thought will generate a subtle electromagnetic current throughout your body that will stir your DNA into some form of biological response. Most of us are completely unaware of how our moods, thoughts, beliefs and general attitude literally mould our bodies.

Tell me, Mar,” she would say (and here it must be explained, that when she called him by the first syllable of his first name, she was in a dreamy, amorous, acquiescent mood, domestic, languid a little, as if spiced logs were burning, and it was evening, yet not time to dress, and a thought wet perhaps outside, enough to make the leaves glisten, but a nightingale might be singing even so among the azaleas, two or three dogs barking at distant farms, a cock crowing—all of which the reader should imagine in her voice)—“Tell me, Mar,” she would say, “about Cape Horn.” Then Shelmerdine would make a little model on the ground of the Cape with twigs and dead leaves and an empty snail shell or two. “Here’s the north,” he would say. “There’s the south. The wind’s coming from hereabouts. Now the Brig is sailing due west; we’ve just lowered the top-boom mizzen; and so you see—here, where this bit of grass is, she enters the current which you’ll find marked—where’s my map and compasses, Bo’sun?—Ah! thanks, that’ll do, where the snail shell is. The current catches her on the starboard side, so we must rig the jib boom or we shall be carried to the larboard, which is where that beech leaf is,—for you must understand my dear—” and so he would go on, and she would listen to every word; interpreting them rightly, so as to see, that is to say, without his having to tell her, the phosphorescence on the waves, the icicles clanking in the shrouds; how he went to the top of the mast in a gale; there reflected on the destiny of man; came down again; had a whisky and soda; went on shore; was trapped by a black woman; repented; reasoned it out; read Pascal; determined to write philosophy; bought a monkey; debated the true end of life; decided in favour of Cape Horn, and so on. All this and a thousand other things she understood him to say and so when she replied, Yes, negresses are seductive, aren’t they? he having told her that the supply of biscuits now gave out, he was surprised and delighted to find how well she had taken his meaning. “Are you positive you aren’t a man?” he would ask anxiously, and she would echo, “Can it be possible you’re not a woman?” and then they must put it to the proof without more ado.

The various causes of ease or strain have interchangeable effects. When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuition, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar. You are also likely to be relatively casual and superficial in your thinking. When you feel strained, you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you also are less intuitive and less creative as usual.

The various causes of ease or strain have interchangeable effects. When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar. You are also likely to be relatively casual and superficial in your thinking. When you feel strained, you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you also are less intuitive and less creative than usual.

Lady Cameron,” he said, playing his role with elan as he nodded toward Ian. “You recall our friend Lord Thornton, Marquess of Kensington, I hope?” The radiant smile Elizabeth bestowed on Ian was not at all what the dowager had insisted ought to be “polite but impartial.” It wasn’t quite like any smile she’d ever given him. “Of course I remember you, my lord,” Elizabeth said to Ian, graciously offering him her hand. “I believe this waltz is mine,” he said for the benefit of Elizabeth’s avidly interested admirers. He waited until they were near the dancers, then he tried to sound more pleasant. “You seem to be enjoying yourself tonight.” “I am,” she said idly, but when she looked up at his face she saw the coolness in his eyes; with her new understanding of her own feelings, she understood his more easily. A soft, knowing smile touched her lips as the musicians struck up a waltz; it stayed in her heart as Ian’s arm slid around her waist, and his left hand closed around her fingers, engulfing them. Overhead a hundred thousand candles burned in crystal chandeliers, but Elizabeth was back in a moonlit arbor long ago. Then as now, Ian moved to the music with effortless ease. That lovely waltz had begun something that had ended wrong, terribly wrong. Now, as she danced in his arms, she could make this waltz end much differently, and she knew it; the knowledge filled her with pride and a twinge of nervousness. She waited, expecting him to say something tender, as he had the last time. “Belhaven’s been devouring you with his eyes all night,” Ian said instead. “So have half the men in this ballroom. For a country that prides itself on its delicate manners, they sure as hell don’t extend to admiring beautiful women.” That, Elizabeth thought with a startled inner smile, was not the opening she’d been waiting for. With his current mood, Elizabeth realized, she was going to have to make her own opening. Lifting her eyes to his enigmatic golden ones, she said quietly, “Ian, have you ever wanted something very badly-something that was within your grasp-and yet you were afraid to reach out for it?” Surprised by her grave question and her use of his name, Ian tried to ignore the jealousy that had been eating at him all night. “No,” he said, scrupulously keeping the curtness from his voice as he gazed down at her alluring face. “Why do you ask? Is there something you want?” Her gaze fell from his, and she nodded at his frilled white shirtfront. “What is it you want?” “You.” Ian’s breath froze in his chest, and he stared down at her lustrous hair. “What did you just say?” She raised her eyes to his. “I said I want you, only I’m afraid that I-“ Ian’s heart slammed into his chest, and his fingers dug reflexively into her back, starting to pull her to him. “Elizabeth,” he said in a strained voice, glancing a little wildly at their avidly curious audience and resisting the impossible impulse to take her out onto the balcony, “why in God’s name would you say a thing like that to me when we’re in the middle of a damned dance floor in a crowded ballroom?” Her radiant smile widened. “I thought it seemed like exactly the right place,” she told him, watching his eyes darken with desire. “Because it’s safer?” Ian asked in disbelief, meaning safer from his ardent reaction. “No, because this is how it all began two years ago. We were in the arbor, and a waltz was playing,” she reminded him needlessly. “And you came up behind me and said, ‘Dance with me, Elizabeth.’ And-and I did,” she said, her voice trailing off at the odd expression darkening his eyes. “Remember?” she added shakily when he said absolutely nothing. His gaze held hers, and his voice was tender and rough. “Love me, Elizabeth.” Elizabeth felt a tremor run through her entire body, but she looked at him without flinching. “I do.

Choosing a book is so gratifying, it’s worth dragging out the process, starting even before finishing the current one. As the final chapters approach, you can pile up the possibilities like a stack of travel brochures. You can lay out three books and let them linger overnight before making a final decision in the morning. You can Google the reviews; ask other people if they’ve read it, collect information. The choice may ultimately depend on the mood and the moment. ‘You have to read a book at the right time for you,’ Lessing also said, ‘and I am sure this cannot be insisted on too often, for it is the key to the enjoyment of literature.

Navigate “This Is Too Hard for Me” Thinking Anxious perfectionists like to feel very on top of things. When they think, “This is too hard for me,” they often treat it as fact, instead of recognizing it as potentially just another anxiety-induced false alarm. Remember, if you’re anxiety-prone, then by definition your anxiety system is predisposed to false alarms—that is, registering dangers that aren’t there. Thoughts are just thoughts; the problem is that we accept thoughts as true, and confuse feelings with facts. Part of the reason this happens is memory bias: Your brain will tend to remember events from the past that match your current mood. Because current mood has such a powerful effect on thoughts, consciously trying to recall evidence that you’re skilled and talented probably won’t feel very authentic or convincing when you’re feeling down. If you know this is how your brain works, then you can discount some of the negative thoughts you have when you’re in a deflated mood. Your thoughts will naturally improve when your mood improves. Therefore, regaining confidence is often just a matter of being patient and waiting for a negative or anxious mood to pass. Experiment: Have there been any times in the past when you’ve had “this is too hard for me” thoughts, those thoughts have been a false alarm, and you’ve managed to do the thing you feared was too hard for you? Identify one example. Your example doesn’t need to be something huge. A small example will do.

What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was. "I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion!" There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world would not come forth. "It looks such awful rot now," he said, mournfully. "And yet it seemed so good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?" I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: "Perhaps you don't feel in the mood for writing." "Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!" "Read me what you've done," I said. "He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be. "It needs compression," I suggested, cautiously. "I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word here without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing it." "Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week." "I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?" "How can I judge from a half-written tale? Tell me the story as it lies in your head." Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. I looked at him, and wondering whether it were possible that he did not know the originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way? It was distinctly a Notion among notions. Men had been puffed up with pride by notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie babbled on serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible sentences that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the end. It would be folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands, when I could do so much with it. Not all that could be done indeed; but, oh so much!

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a collection of symptoms that can include among other things: mood swings, anxiety, breast tenderness, bloating, acne, headaches, stomach pain and sleep problems. PMS affects 90% of women, but is chronically under-studied: one research round-up found five times as many studies on erectile dysfunction than on PMS.88 And yet while a range of medication exists to treat erectile dysfunction89 there is very little available for women, to the extent that over 40% of women who have PMS don’t respond to treatments currently available. Sufferers are still sometimes treated with hysterectomies; in extreme cases, women have tried to kill themselves.90 But researchers are still being turned down for research grants on the basis that ‘PMS does not actually exist’.91

Spoiling Argument is a kind of argument that begins when one partner deliberately –and for no immediately obvious reason – attempts to spoil the good mood and high spirits of the other. On the surface it looks as if we’re simply monsters. But if we dig a little deeper a more understandable (though no less regrettable) picture may emerge. We are acting in this way because our partner’s buoyant and breezy mood can come across as a forbidding barrier to communication. We fear that their current happiness could prevent them from knowing the shame or melancholy, worry or loneliness that presently possesses us. A dark instinct in our minds experiences our partner’s upbeat mood as a warning that our uncheery parts must now be unwelcome and are, through their remorseless negativity, in a garbled and maddening way begging us for reassurance.

The case of a patient with dissociative identity disorder follows: Cindy, a 24-year-old woman, was transferred to the psychiatry service to facilitate community placement. Over the years, she had received many different diagnoses, including schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder. Dissociative identity disorder was her current diagnosis. Cindy had been well until 3 years before admission, when she developed depression, "voices," multiple somatic complaints, periods of amnesia, and wrist cutting. Her family and friends considered her a pathological liar because she would do or say things that she would later deny. Chronic depression and recurrent suicidal behavior led to frequent hospitalizations. Cindy had trials of antipsychotics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and anxiolytics, all without benefit. Her condition continued to worsen. Cindy was a petite, neatly groomed woman who cooperated well with the treatment team. She reported having nine distinct alters that ranged in age from 2 to 48 years; two were masculine. Cindy’s main concern was her inability to control the switches among her alters, which made her feel out of control. She reported having been sexually abused by her father as a child and described visual hallucinations of him threatening her with a knife. We were unable to confirm the history of sexual abuse but thought it likely, based on what we knew of her chaotic early home life. Nursing staff observed several episodes in which Cindy switched to a troublesome alter. Her voice would change in inflection and tone, becoming childlike as ]oy, an 8-year-old alter, took control. Arrangements were made for individual psychotherapy and Cindy was discharged. At a follow-up 3 years later, Cindy still had many alters but was functioning better, had fewer switches, and lived independently. She continued to see a therapist weekly and hoped to one day integrate her many alters.

Yet, we are not Skinner's rats. Even Skinner's rats were not Skinner's rats: the patterns of addictive behavior displayed by rats in the Skinner Box were only displayed by rats in isolation, outside of their normal sociable habitat. For human beings, addictions have subjective meanings, as does depression. Marcus Gilroy-Ware's study of social media suggests that what we encounter in our feeds is hedonic stimulation, various moods and sources of arousal- from outrage porn to food porn to porn- which enable us to manage our emotions. In addition that, however, it's also true that we can become attached to the miseries of online life, a state of perpetual outrage and antagonism. There is a sense in which our online avatar resembles a 'virtual tooth' in the sense described by the German surrealist artist Hans Bellmer. In the grip of a toothache, a common reflex is to make a fist so tight that the fingernails bite into the skin. This 'confuses' and 'bisects' the pain by creating a 'virtual center of excitation,' a virtual tooth that seems to draw blood and nervous energy away from the real center of pain. If we are in pain, this suggests, self-harming can be a way of displacing it so that it appears lessened- event though the pain hasn't really been reduced, and we still have a toothache. So if we get hooked on a machine that purports to tell us, among other things, how other people see us- or a version of ourselves, a delegated online image- that suggests something has already gone wrong in our relationships with others. The global rise in depression- currently the world's most widespread illness, having risen some 18 per cent since 2005- is worsened for many people by the social industry. There is a particularly strong correlation between depression and the use of Instagram among young people. But social industry platforms didn't invent depression; they exploited it. And to loosen their grip, one would have to explore what has gone wrong elsewhere.

Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. We recognize that people will continue to have sex for nonreproductive reasons despite the laws and mores. Therefore, we try to make sexual practices as safe as possible in order to minimize the spread of the AIDS viruses. In a similar way, we continually try to make our drinking water, foods, and even our pharmaceutical medicines safer. The ubiquity of chemical intoxicants in our lives is undeniable evidence of the continuing universal need for safer medicines with such applications. While use may not always be for an approved medical purpose, or prudent, or even legal, it is fulfilling the relentless drive we all have to change the way we feel, to alter our behavior and consciousness, and, yes, to intoxicate ourselves. We must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk free and as healthy as possible. Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants? I mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death. Imagine an alcohol-type substance that never caused addiction, liver disease, hangovers, impaired driving, or workplace problems. Would you care to inhale a perfumed mist that is as enjoyable as marijuana or tobacco but as harmless as clean air? How would you like a pain-killer as effective as morphine but safer than aspirin, a mood enhancer that dissolves on your tongue and is more appealing than cocaine and less harmful than caffeine, a tranquilizer less addicting than Valium and more relaxing than a martini, or a safe sleeping pill that allows you to choose to dream or not? Perhaps you would like to munch on a user friendly hallucinogen that is as brief and benign as a good movie? This is not science fiction. As described in the following pages, there are such intoxicants available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use. If smokers can switch from tobacco cigarettes to nicotine gum, why can’t crack users chew a cocaine gum that has already been tested on animals and found to be relatively safe? Even safer substances may be just around the corner. But we must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Then we must join together in building new, perfectly safe intoxicants for a world that will be ready to discard the old ones like the junk they really are. This book is your guide to that future. It is a field guide to that silent spring of intoxicants and all the animals and peoples who have sipped its waters. We can no more stop the flow than we can prevent ourselves from drinking. But, by cleaning up the waters we can leave the morass that has been the endless war on drugs and step onto the shores of a healthy tomorrow. Use this book to find the way.

One of the few entry points to the Baltic Sea, the Kattegat passage is a busy and treacherous waterway. The entire region is a maze of fractured islands, shallow waters and tricky cur-rents which test the skills of all mariners. A vital sea route, the strait is used by large container ships, oil tankers and cruise ships alike and provides a crucial link between the Baltic coun-tries and Europe and the rest of the world. Navigating is difficult even in calm weather and clear visibility is a rare occurrence in these higher latitudes. During severe winters, it’s not uncommon for sections of the Baltic Sea to freeze, with ice occasionally drifting out of the straits, carried by the surface currents. The ship I was commandeering was on a back-and-forth ‘pendulum’ run, stopping at the ports of St Petersburg (Russia), Kotka (Finland), Gdańsk (Poland), Aarhus (Denmark) and Klaipėda (Lithuania) in the Baltic Sea, and Bremerhaven (Ger-many) and Rotterdam (Netherlands) in the North Sea. On this particular trip, the weather gods were in a benevolent mood and we were transiting under a faultless blue sky in one of the most picturesque regions of the world. The strait got narrower as we sailed closer to Zealand (Sjælland), the largest of the off-lying Danish islands. Up ahead, as we zigzagged through the laby-rinth of islands, the tall and majestic Great Belt Bridge sprang into view. The pylons lift the suspension bridge some sixty-five metres above sea level allowing it to accommodate the largest of the ocean cruise liners that frequently pass under its domi-nating expanse.

And yet what a potentially dangerous device, what a terrible opportunity to bury valuable, even vital sensory information beneath the fears and prejudices and suppressions of the higher brain! We absolutely must exercise constant discrimination upon the steady barrage of sensations if they are to take on any meaningful form and direct sequential activities; but what bizarre, even ghastly shapes this discrimination is free to invent. Attitudes, moods, neuroses, fixations, and avoidances of all kinds contribute to the sensitivity of the ascending sensory pathways themselves, so that minor irritations can be magnified to overwhelming proportions, pleasures can be erased or actually turned into torments, serious internal difficulties can be blotted completely out of consciousness. The principle of selectivity is crucial to organized behavior, but the possibilities for its abuse are enormous. The mind is capable of distorting incoming information to almost any degree, and it can actually construct a body image that has very little to do with the bulk of sensory data which the body is providing. These two directions of sensory transmission are both occurring all the time, and we cannot say that our idea of reality is more clearly established by one than by the other. Or, if we have to make a choice, we must admit that it is the descending, centrifugal sensory current that is the more important one: We all receive stimulation from the same external world through identical sensory devices, but it is the process of selection and interpretation which makes us respond differently, makes each of us the unique individuals that we are. In this process, discriminating mind descends into and is active in every synapse of the sensory system. The two processes of transmitting data through the nervous system and of interpreting it cannot be separated. Information is processed at each synaptic level of the afferent pathways. There is no one point along the afferent pathways or one particular level beneath the central nervous system below which activity cannot be a conscious sensation and above which it is a recognizable, defineable sensory experience. Perception has many levels, and it seems that the many separate stages are arranged in a hierarchy, with the more complex stages receiving input only after they are processed by the more elementary systems.13 And the more elementary systems are in turn facilitated or inhibited by the higher, more complex ones. The conclusions towards which these observations push us seems unequivocal. The cognitive, associational processes of the higher brain have just as much to do with our construction of physical reality—both within us and outside of us—as do our sensory devices and their specific stimulations. And remember, it is the perception of this sensory reality which initiates and directs our motor responses, our postures, and our behavior.

Do you really expect me to believe that? Because I don’t. And damn it, you were with me the next night!” She wanted to throw her phone she was so pissed, but she managed to calm herself down. “I have to admit that your success rate speaks for itself. You got me good. Two separate times. I’d give you a trophy, but in my current mood, I’d put it up your ass, and I am not going to jail for felony assault with this year’s Best Lying Sack of Shit award.” “You got this all wrong.

Another quality that comes naturally as you learn to surf is renunciation. Jerry and I had to practice renunciation every day. Because we wanted to surf in the afternoons, we renounced driving our souped-up cars up and down the street in front of Palo Alto High after school where everyone could see us. Jerry renounced smoking so he could keep his lungs in good shape to handle the strong currents and mammoth waves. We even had to renounce hanging out with girls in the afternoons. It wasn’t easy to give up these things that we liked, but we had fallen in love with surfing, so we did it. Renunciation is a matter of putting aside our immediate desires just a little bit so we can stay focused on something bigger. As Jerry and I waited in the water, watching the horizon for a wave big enough to carry us all the way in to shore, we were often tempted to take whatever wave came along. Resisting that temptation was another form of renunciation. Training in renunciation involves seeing our immediate desires as they arise without indulging them. If you indulge a desire, what happens next? Another desire arises. And another and another. The faster you indulge your desires, the faster they come. You’ll never learn to surf if you are distracted by the small waves that constantly lap at your surfboard. After a while, the small steady waves of desire no longer distract you. Eventually, even the surfboard begins to dissolve because you no longer need it. Suddenly, you realize that you are right there in the surf with no gap, no separation between you and the waves, completely immersed in the ocean. Wave by wave is how we stay engaged with life. It is the only way to experience the immediacy and vigor that real life offers. Sure, it’s raw. But we don’t need to protect ourselves from the moods and nuances of life’s great ocean. We can stay right with it, in placid times and in turbulent times. Life is always offering us the energy and vitality we need—just let the salt water seep into your pores.

Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this—hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension. And now it may be expected that the other of the two “heavenly forces,” eternal Eros, will put forth his strength so as to maintain himself alongside of his equally immortal adversary. And perhaps our children will live to live a full life, and so see what Freud could not see—in the old adversary, a friend.

Instead, the new thought actually creates activity in the neocortex—the thinking part of the brain. Depressive thoughts activate the subcortex, the feeling part of the brain. We have the choice of using either the subcortex (feeling portion) or the neocortex (thinking portion) region of our brain. Remember, your mind will move in the direction of the most current and dominant thought. You can make a thought dominant by saying it over and over again. Even repeatedly saying, “I am depressed” has an effect upon your depression. And when you’re depressed you tend to act in a way that reinforces your depression. You may look depressed. You think defeatist, depressive thoughts. When you’re depressed you’re letting your mind tell you what to feel, think, and do. The author of BrainSwitch Out of Depression suggests that we can choose thoughts that will bring us out of depression. Practically anything that is repeated again and again will work. Remember the importance of repetition?[89] It could be a nursery rhyme. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, I’ve seen the results firsthand. People have kicked out depression simply by repeating phrases such as “blue cat” or “purple dogs” or “pink frog.” It’s true! These new phrases directly initiate activity in the brain, away from the parts that respond to depressed thinking. The new words activate neurons in the thinking part of the brain. Activity in the feeling portion slows. Stress chemicals being poured into the brain diminish. You might choose to short-circuit the cycle of thinking that leads to depression by repeating the phrase, “Yes, praise God.” Or you might pray for yourself or someone else. You could also say, “I can do this!” Any affirmations will work.[90] You also can improve mood and eliminate

I am noticing that my relationship with (write name) is going more and more smoothly. I am becoming more and more patient. I am creating a positive relationship with (write name). I am feeling closer to (write name). I am learning positive parenting skills. I am listening and observing without reacting. I am being clear, firm, and loving with (write child’s name). I am behaving in a warm and loving manner with (write partner’s name). I am spending quality time with (write name) on a regular basis. I am verbalizing caring and loving feelings to (write partner’s name). I am displaying physical affection to (write partner’s name). I am doing something for (write partner’s name) that I know will please (him/her). Practice creating Cognitive Workout statements that deal with specific relationship issues or concerns that you are currently experiencing. You can use the above list of statements to guide you.

Fifth, while the current mood, reflected in the Dodd-Frank Act, is to limit the LLR’s powers, the right response is to increase them while subjecting the LLR to equal-treatment principles that restrict favoritism.

Energy: One –You’re tired, lethargic, you can’t go on. Five –You’re bursting with energy, and feel completely invigorated, you’re ready to take on the world. Mood: One –You’re feeling really low, and totally bummed out. Five –You’re elated, everything’s possible. Tension: One –You’re tightly wound and stressed out over your current problem/ stressor. Five –You’re loose, calm, and relaxed. Problem Solvability: One –Your self-talk sounds like, “I’m stuck. I’m going to be here forever. It’s insurmountable.” Five –Your self-talk sounds like, “I got this. Slam dunk. This is totally solvable.

How there's no going back to whatever version of me existed before ... I read Marguerite Duras's account of a river and its current, a girl, a lover, a mother, of memory's weakness for women and gold lame heels. Or when I was woken up by the news and this planet's despairing chorus-how it dislocates the heart and coaxes cynics and makes a mass out of individuals. Or whatever version of me existed before I met that boy whom I loved for one winter and well into spring, when the magnolias in early bloom looked not just pink but elaborate, ambient, and grand, like my insides were seeable-flowering so forcefully, like nature cautioning me: Durga, this won't last.

read once that time management is impossible—what you are managing is not time, which ticks on with or without you in its own inexorable current, but yourself. I manage myself, my actions, my thoughts, my goals, my calories ingested and expended, mood, work deliverables, and long-range planning with an intensity and accountability that I know most people could not handle, and which I would never subject one of my subordinates to because it’s too much to ask, but if you want to know how I’ve gotten to where I am, that is how.

journal prompts to help you reflect on your current coping strategies for low mood. When feeling low, what are your go-to responses? Do those responses provide instant relief from the pain and discomfort? What effect do they have in the long term? What do they cost you? (Not in money, but in time, effort, health, progress.)

She had always been unpredictable. She rushed decisions based on her current mood and said things she quickly regretted. If she had been any other way, they would’ve never met. But this was something even her idiosyncrasies couldn’t justify.

Our current cultural ethos is that achieving happiness is like achieving other goals. If we simply work hard at it, we can master happiness, just as we can figure out how to use new computer software, play the piano or learn Spanish. However, if the goal of becoming happier is different from these other goals, efforts devoted to augmenting happiness may backfire, disappointing -and potentially depressing- us because we can't achieve our expected goal.

Finally, as we prepare to shift focus from ordinary low mood to mood disorders, it is worth asking why low mood feels so awful. Why doesn’t the system respond to failing efforts by assessing the alternatives objectively and shifting to the next best one at the right time, without self-doubt, rumination, and psychic pain? Multiple explanations contribute, but I think the main one is the same as the explanation for why physical pain hurts. The suffering that accompanies nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, fever, fatigue, pain, anxiety, and low mood motivates escape from a current bad situation and avoidance of future similar situations. Individuals who do not experience physical pain accumulate injuries and usually die by early adulthood. People who don’t feel bad when pursuing unreachable goals spend their lives in contented useless efforts.

Dale’s face is older. Just a little. Around the eyes and mouth. The skin of his neck. The back of his hands. Maybe not, he thinks, turning on the faucet, letting the water grow warm then hot. He begins shaving his lubricated chin and cheeks. Chrysalis hibernation slows things down, but it doesn't stop them, not all together, and he finds himself to currently resemble something between a derelict and a college student, neither one ringing particularly desirable in his present mood.

Flow is a rush like no other. If you want grounds for comparison, consider the current use-abuse rates for mood-altering, mind-altering, and performance-enhancing drugs: In America, over 22 percent of the population has an illicit drug problem; one out of ten take antidepressants; 26 percent of kids are on stimulants, purportedly for ADHD, anecdotally for performance enhancement. And prescription drugs? They’ve just surpassed car accidents as the number one cause of accidental death. Add this up and you’ll find a trillion-dollar public-health crisis. Now consider what these abused drugs do. The primary illicit drug of choice is marijuana—that triggers the release of anandamide. Antidepressants are some combination of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin; tobacco and ADHD drugs affect dopamine and norepinephrine; and prescription drugs of abuse are opioids like Oxycontin—meaning they affect the endorphin system. In other words, Americans are literally killing themselves trying to achieve artificially the same sensations that flow produces naturally. Of course, as a perfect endogenous combination of these drugs, flow is also a major rush. But unlike the dead-end highs currently plaguing public health, flow doesn’t sidetrack one’s life; it revitalizes it.

Someone starts out sedentary, overweight, and somewhat insulin resistant. They set out to improve their health and lose some weight by following a low-carb diet. It works great. They lose weight, their insulin sensitivity improves, and their energy is through the roof. They start exercising, which helps them lose some more weight, as well as build some lean muscle mass. Now they are really into it, and the frequency and intensity of their training increases. This individual is now at a healthy weight (or relatively lean), is exercising regularly, and has better insulin sensitivity. They are a completely different person, metabolically speaking, then when they started. But the problem is they are no longer properly fueling their body and recovering from their intense training sessions (which were once non-existent). They are starting to feel tired and fatigued in the gym, are always in a bad mood, are holding on to stubborn body fat, can’t sleep at night, get sick all of the time, and are maybe having some sexual performance and hormonal issues. Their diet no longer matches their new activity levels and current metabolic condition, because those have completely changed over time. If this person objectively looked at their situation and progress and listened to their own body and biofeedback, they would consider some dietary adjustments. A moderate-to-higher carb intake might be a better fit. But some people will cling to a diet that initially gave them good results, and got them from Point A to Point B, thinking it will get them from Point B to Point C. I’ve been there myself. Part of it is initial experience, part of it is marketing material, and part of it is pure emotion. It doesn’t always work that way for continued progress.

She and Becky had been on their hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor when he'd come in with an ear-to-ear grin, his skin glowing and his hair damp, unruly, and deliciously tousled. With him around, getting any work done had been impossible. He'd been munching an apple, prowling the kitchen like a restless cat, and driving Juliet insane with his playful feints to her face, to the wall, to the leg of a chair. "Would you stop?" she'd finally cried, looking up at him and laughing as she'd swatted him away. "Can't," he'd said and, winking at Becky, leaned down and kissed Juliet fully on the lips. He'd tasted of sweet apples and sunshine, and she'd felt a rush of desire for him that had made her wish Becky was anywhere but in their kitchen. "What's got you in such a good mood?" she'd managed after he finally broke the kiss and straightened up, leaving her breathless and flushed, her hand to her suddenly pounding heart. "Oh, nothing."  Another playful feint to her shoulder. "Nothing at all, dearest!" "The way you're acting, one might think you were going to the fight tonight." His eyebrows had risen, and then he'd laughed, loudly. "Well, maybe I am," he'd said, cheerfully; then, saluting her with his apple, he'd swung back out the door. Juliet had watched him as he crossed the lawn and headed toward the manor house, his stride cocky and giving him the appearance of owning the world. When she'd turned back to Becky, the other girl was simply sitting back on her heels and shaking her head in amusement. "Men!  They just never grow up, do they?" "Do you know, Becky ... I hope that one never does. He can make me laugh when all I want to do is cry. He can make me see the good in a situation when all I see is the bad. He knows when life should be taken seriously — and when it shouldn't. He's delightful and funny and clever — and not afraid to make a total cake of himself."  She had smiled and given a little sigh. "No, I never want him to grow up ... not if it means seeing him change into something other than what he currently is." Becky

Existentialism is commonly associated with Left-Bank Parisian cafes and the ‘family’ of philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir who gathered there in the years immediately following the liberation of Paris at the end of World War II. One imagines offbeat, avant-garde intellectuals, attached to their cigarettes, listening to jazz as they hotly debate the implications of their new-found political and artistic liberty. The mood is one of enthusiasm, creativity, anguished self-analysis, and freedom – always freedom. Though this reflects the image projected by the media of the day and doubtless captures the spirit of the time, it glosses over the philosophical significance of existentialist thought, packaging it as a cultural phenomenon of a certain historical period. That is perhaps the price paid by a manner of thinking so bent on doing philosophy concretely rather than in some abstract and timeless manner. The existentialists’ urge for contemporary relevance fired their social and political commitment. But it also linked them with the problems of their day and invited subsequent generations to view them as having the currency of yesterday’s news. Such is the misreading of existentialist thought that I hope to correct in this short volume. If it bears the marks of its post-war appearance, existentialism as a manner of doing philosophy and a way of addressing the issues that matter in people’s lives is at least as old as philosophy itself. It is as current as the human condition which it examines.

PSYCHOSIS: A severe mental disorder, a derangement of personality. Some individuals experience mood swings and agitation, but emotional dampening and social withdrawal are the most common symptoms. Despite society’s beliefs, psychotic individuals rarely become violent and are often at a much greater risk of causing harm to themselves than to others.8 There are many theories as to what causes psychosis. Many current theories agree that it is caused by a combination of inherited genetic factors and external environmental factors.

He wanted her- all of her. Not just the physical her, but her devotion, her love, her heart- all the essential her, the tangible intangible of her being, her self. He wanted it all- and he wasn't going to be satisfied with anything less. He knew why he wanted her, too. Why she was different. But he wasn't going to think about that. She was his. He'd known it the instant he'd held her in his arms, that first evening with the storm lowering about them. She'd fitted- and he'd known, instinctively, immediately, at some level deeper than his bones. He hadn't come by his name by accident; he had a gift for recognizing what scent was on the breeze. An instinctive hunter, he responded to shifts in the mood, the atmosphere, taking advantage of whatever current was flowing without a conscious thought. He'd known from the first just what was in the wind- known from the instant he'd held Patience Debbington in his arms.

The most recent writers on genius, creativity’s greatest manifestation, agree that it can appear at any point in the life cycle, not just in childhood. They reject the nineteenth-century romantic belief that it exists only in a small set of heroic people. They find three factors key to what they see as a more general phenomenon. First is a grandiose and mystical sense of the world, what Einstein called “cosmic religiosity.” Such an elevated mood can appear in the hypomanic phase of the up-down cycle of someone with a bipolar disorder, as depression lifts and elation appears. The second element of genius is an ability to concentrate obsessively on a goal and to strive for perfection in reaching it. The third element is a resonance to one’s historical era, being in sync with current ideals, living when one’s gift or invention can be appreciated.5

Western governments have responded to these hard times—which have been created by rampant greed and corruption among their wealthiest citizens—by asking those least responsible for the current conditions to bear the burden. After paying for the crisis of the bankers with cuts to education, health care, and social safety nets, is it any wonder that a beleaguered public is in no mood to bail out the fossil fuel companies from the crisis that they not only created but continue to actively worsen?

The dominant mood of Jerusalem had been the strange side-by-side of conflicting national currents, like a painful, complicated cramp; next to a world of contemplation and deep religious emotion there had brooded, like a cloud of poison, an almost mystical hatred over people and things.

Studies are currently under way to determine if gut microbial changes are associated with positive mind-based interventions, such as hypnosis and meditation, and if these changes lead to symptom improvements in such disorders as irritable bowel syndrome.

After two rings, Sam answered. “Where are you?” I snarled. If I was here being unhappy, Sam should be here, too. Weren’t we sort-of partners? “I took another day off,” he said, now clued in about my mood. He was only pretending to be casual. “Seriously, Sam, where are you?” “Yeah, you sound pretty damn serious,” he said, now borderline angry himself. “Did you get married?” The thought of Sam being on his honeymoon with Jannalynn—having fun while Eric made me miserable—was simply intolerable. I’ve had moments when I recognized that my reactions to current events were out of the stratosphere (most often when I was in the grip of my monthly woes), and usually that realization was enough for me to rein in the inappropriateness. But not today.

My head pounds and my chest aches as it gets harder and harder to hold my breath. Never King. Drenched in darkness, terrified of light. Do you hear us now, Never King? The current ebbs away. Flashing tails swim a wide circle around me. You cannot have light, a voice says. Without darkness, another adds. You cannot have darkness… I am in no mood for your parables, I say. What is it you want? You want me to be better? You want me to be less dark and more light? Just fucking tell me.

Interestingly, nostalgia is more likely to be triggered by negative moods, like loneliness, and by our struggles to find meaning in our current lives.

One of the best ways to be patient is to keep your mind focused on what you are currently doing.

Imposing trade, economic, or other kinds of sanctions on an intransigent or authoritarian regime, whose head lives in an ivory tower, is not desirable as an effective weapon, because sanctions directly hit the common people, pushing more of them to the edge. Dear leaders, we must stop warmongering and give peace plenty of chances. Killing fellow humans is disgusting. Reach out to your so-called enemies and engage them in discourses to foster reconciliation. The world counts on your statesmanship. It is a well-established fact that a single leader can change the mood the world over. Leaders can make a mess, create, and fuel tension, or bring peace and order. The world does not need aggressive, combative leaders; it is starving for skilled diplomats and peacemakers.” Excerpts from Chapter 10, “War: A Senseless Option Versus Sensible Alternatives” of AWAY FROM THE MADDING WORLD: A Thoughtful Analysis of the Causes of Human Woes, and Remedial Suggestions If our political leaders had offered Vladimir Putin some concessions, instead of provoking, humiliating, and infuriating him, the current brutal Ukraine war could have been averted. End this conflict thru compromises. Everyone is suffering – physically, emotionally, or economically. Let us not forget several of the players in this suicidal game are nuclear powers, and Putin’s nuclear threats must be taken seriously. I’m afraid another Hitler is in the making!

But what if current misery hindsightfully selects and reconstructs memories of childhood to be consistent with a miserable state today? Peter Lewinsohn and Michael Rosenbaum (1987) set out to answer this question with a rare prospective study of over a thousand citizen volunteers. [...] The results were consistent with the hypothesis that recollection of one’s parents as rejecting and unloving is strongly influenced by current moods; negative recollections were not a stable characteristic of depression-prone people. [...] This study of depression is important in that it casts doubt on the degree to which adult problems are caused by childhood ones. Given a biasing effect of mood on memory, people who are distressed as adults tend to remember distressing incidents in their childhood. And, if a person also believes that current problems have their roots in early life (perhaps because their therapist told them so), this view itself may serve as an organizing principle to produce even greater distortion of recall (remember the Conway & Ross [1984] study).

I pause at a red light and shuffle through my Taylor albums. My current mood is Folklore. But what I need is 1989,

The past, and how we view it, is more a reflection of where we currently are than of the past itself. As the psychologist Dr. Brent Slife states in the book Time and Psychological Explanation (emphasis mine): “We reinterpret or reconstruct our memory in light of what our mental set is in the present. In this sense, it is more accurate to say the present causes the meaning of the past, than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present. . . . Our memories are not stored and objective entities but living parts of ourselves in the present. This is the reason our present moods and future goals so affect our memories.

Emotions function as a behavioral motivation system; accordingly, our mood is heavily impacted by progress towards current goals rather than one's overall life situation.

My advice to writers: Writing isn’t something that you think about, it’s something that you feel. There is no good moment to write because every moment is good for writing. You are capturing your current mood and feelings. It’s the perfect time to describe your joy, love, or pain. When it is time to create a character or essay you have an authentic place to pull from. Writing about the beach from your bedside and writing about a beach with your toes in the sand is a different level of poetry.

Things go wrong when you fish, and those chances increase when you’re in a boat. Often this has to do with what’s known as human error. This is the preferred term because it doesn’t name the human who made the error, especially when that human is me. Once, Dave and I were in his canoe on the last quarter mile of a long day on the water. We were around a bend from the takeout. Beyond one final rapids we would pull over and load up his van. The only thing standing in our way was a large rock. The current picked up and moved us faster, but it would be easy to avoid the rock. It would almost be harder to hit it than to miss it. I was in the bow, Dave was in the stern. Without question he was the captain, I’m not sure a fifteen-foot canoe has a captain, but Dave would be the captain of anything from a kayak to a steamer. “Go to the left of the rock,” he bellowed. This could not have been clearer and took on some urgency as the rock got nearer. Yet we rowed at cross-purposes and continued to head straight toward it. In search of clarity I shouted: “Our left or the rock’s left?” The metaphysical nature of this question has remained with me over the years. If it appeared in a Basho haiku, it might be considered cryptically wise or at least a noble mistranslation. Canoe in summer Floats slowly down the river Past the large rock’s left Not this time. The last thing I remember hearing, which echoed in my ears underwater as we turned over, was Dave saying emphatically, “The rock doesn’t have a left!” My tendency to overanalyze simple situations was captured in this question, though I’m embarrassed to admit in private moments it still makes sense to me that a rock can have a left. Hitting a rock with a canoe may have many reasons but one result. The canoe tipped at once, decisively, and Dave’s only concern was the fate of his tackle box, which occupied a place in his spiritual landscape like the Gutenberg Bible. Thankfully, the river wasn’t deep there, just a few feet. Once the tackle box was salvaged—which he always kept tightly shut in case of this exact sort of catastrophe—Dave was in a fairly agreeable mood. He didn’t care about getting wet or even mention it. He had the grin of a teenager who’s just talked his way out of a speeding ticket. This was not the first canoe he’d tipped out of. He was seventy-five years old.

I was well aware this wasn’t a word most lethal operatives like myself would use, but I had always marched to the beat of my own drummer. “You paint quite the scary picture, Professor,” I continued, raising my eyebrows. “Why do I have the feeling this isn’t the first time you’ve thought about this?” Singh smiled. “Not quite the first time, no,” she replied. “I guess I have gone into lecture mode. And it’s a lot to absorb. So let me wind this down. The bottom line is that the rates of substance and behavioral addictions have skyrocketed. Our levels of stress and neurosis have too. The furious pace of our advancements, and the toxicities and manipulations I just described, are outstripping our psyches, which were evolved for a simpler existence.” “Do you have statistics on the extent of the problem?” asked Ashley. “It’s impossible to really get your arms around,” replied Singh, “but I’ll try. In 1980, fewer than three thousand Americans died of a drug overdose. By 2021 that number had grown to over a hundred thousand. More than thirty-fold! And it’s only grown since then. “And these are just the mortality stats. Many times this number are addicts. Estimates vary pretty widely, but I can give you numbers that I believe to be accurate. Fifteen to twenty million Americans are addicted to alcohol. Over twenty-five million suffer from nicotine dependence. Many millions more are addicted to cocaine, or heroin, or meth, or fentanyl—which is a hundred times stronger than morphine—or an ever-growing number of other substances. Millions more are addicted to gambling. Or online shopping. Or porn.” Singh frowned deeply. “When it comes to the internet, cell phones, and other behavioral addictions, the numbers are truly immense. Probably half the population. The average smart phone user now spends over three hours a day on this device. And when it comes to our kids, the rate of phone addiction is even higher. Much higher. In some ways, it’s nearly universal. “Meanwhile, many parents insist their children keep this addiction device with them at all times. They’re thrilled to be able to reach their kids every single second of their lives, and track their every movement.” There was a long, stunned silence in the room. “I could go on for days,” said Singh finally. “But I think that gives you some sense of what we’re currently facing as a society.” I tried to think of something humorous to say. Something to lighten the somber mood, which was my instinctive reaction when things got depressing.  But in this case, I had nothing. Singh had called the current situation a crisis. But even this loaded term couldn’t begin to do it justice.

Try this: Use these questions as journal prompts to help you reflect on your current coping strategies for low mood. When feeling low, what are your go-to responses? Do those responses provide instant relief from the pain and discomfort? What effect do they have in the long term? What do they cost you? (Not in money, but in time, effort, health, progress.)

The suffering that accompanies nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, fever, fatigue, pain, anxiety, and low mood motivates escape from a current bad situation and avoidance of future similar situations. Individuals who do not experience physical pain accumulate injuries and usually die by early adulthood. People who don’t feel bad when pursuing unreachable goals spend their lives in contented useless efforts. More low mood might help their genes, but a clinic to boost low mood would be about as popular as a clinic to help people feel more anxious.

My advice to writers: Writing isn’t something that you think about, it’s something that you feel. There is no good moment to write because every moment is good for writing. You are capturing your current mood and feelings. It’s the perfect time to describe your joy, love, or pain. When it is time to create a character or essay you have an authentic place to pull from. Writing about the beach from your bedside and writing about a beach with your toes in the sand is a different level of poetry.

In cognitive therapy, depressed patients are actually learning how to respond to their thoughts and feelings in a way that is very mindful. By writing down your thoughts you’re learning how to switch out of one mode of mind into another. You’re learning how to decenter from thoughts and starting to consider that they are not necessarily true and don’t necessarily represent the self. You’re also learning how to turn toward difficult feelings and emotions by writing them down. You have to say, “Yes, this is happening to me. I’m going to write this down.” And you are working to change their degree of believability. We believe that this teaches people a skillful means of responding to their thoughts and feelings when they are depressed. The challenge is how to do this for patients who are not currently in a depressed mood. Their depression may be gone, but they still need to learn that same emotional wisdom for dealing with judgmental or hopeless thoughts if they come to mind.

Perfume is to smells what eroticism is to sex: an aesthetic, cultural, emotional elaboration of the raw materials provided by nature. The ladies of the court, led by Marie-Antoinette, resorted to the only thing that could keep them one step ahead of the commoners, however wealthy they were: fashion. In fact, this is how fashion as we know it came into existence: the latest trend adopted by a happy few for a season before trickling down to the middle classes. Just a touch of the negligence etudiee that distinguishes chic Parisian women from their fiercely put-together New Yorker or Milanese counterparts. Perfume needs to be supported by image. You're not just doing it to smell good: you're perpetuating a ritual of erotic magic that's been scaring and enticing men in equal measure for millennia. Perfumes are our subconscious. They read us more revealingly than any other choice of adornment, perhaps because their very invisibility deludes us into thinking we can get away with the message they carry. These scents severed fragrance from its function as an extension of a female or male persona - the rugged guy, the innocent waif or the femme fatale - to turn it into a thing that was beautiful, interesting and evocative in and of itself. Perfume's advertising relies on the 3 aspiration S: stars, sex and seduction, with a side helping of dreams or exoticism. Descriptions, impressions, analogies, short stories, snippets or real-life testing, bits of history, parallels with music or literature. Connecting a scent with emotions, impressions, atmospheres, isn't that why we wear it? Isn't it all subjective? Just because you don't want it in your life doesn't make it bad. And it's not entirely impossible to consider perfumes beyond their "like/don't like" status. What intent does t set out to fulfill? How does it achieve its effects? How does it fit in with the history of the brand or its identity? How does it compare to the current season's offerings? Does it bring something new? The story told by the perfumer blends with the ones we tell ourselves about it; with our feelings, our moods, our references, our understanding of it. Once it is released from the bottle, it becomes a new entity. We make it ours: we are the performers of our perfume. Both lust and luxury are coupled in the same Latin word: luxuria is one of the 7 deadly sins. The age-old fear of female sexuality. The lure of beauty, set off by costly and deceitful adornments, could lead men to material and moral ruin but, more frighteningly, suck them into a vortex of erotic voracity. A man's desire waxes and wanes. But how can a woman, whose pleasure is never certain and whose receptive capacity is potentially infinite, ever be controlled?

Editorial photographs published in magazines and online give information not only about specific garments, but also the mood and style that are currently in vogue.

you as the reader must take care that the selection you choose is appropriate for the current mood of your youthful listener. But just because a story is sad or includes a tragic scene does not mean that it is, therefore, inappropriate for all children at all times.

espresso and tapas and it’s perfect for my current mood. As I walk along, pounding the hard pavement, a woman on roller skates burns past me, her white shirt billowing around like a puff of smoke as she elbows me out of the way. The roller skates remind me of Dad, and of clinging on to his hand as I attempted to balance on the pair of rainbow-coloured roller skates I got for my tenth birthday. Thinking of Dad makes me wonder what it must have been like for him all of those years ago. I ponder for a moment, and then after remembering what Sam said in the club, I pull my mobile out from my bag and scroll through the address book to find his number. ‘Hello darling, what a wonderful surprise. Is everything OK?’ His voice sounds worried. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ There’s an awkward silence. ‘I am at work,’ I reply, a little too sharply. ‘Well, I just popped out and … err, I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you the other day,’ I manage, trying to disguise the unease in my voice. ‘So how are you?’ I add, awkwardly. ‘I’m fine. A bit tired. Anyway, enough about me. It’s so nice to hear from you,’ he says, and for a moment it’s as though everything that’s gone on between us before has been forgotten in an instant. But then my back constricts. I start to feel as though calling him was a bad idea, and I realise that I’m just not ready to forget what he did to us … especially to Mum. ‘You know I was telling Uncle Geoffrey

Saturday evening loomed ahead of Lila and she had no plans, no company. Usually it wouldn’t bother her. Lila enjoyed her own company, liked having her independence. It was the frustration of having the cast on her leg, hindering everything. Typically on a Saturday evening with no plans, she would get in the car, head out on an adventure with her camera, but of course she couldn’t drive, so was effectively tied to the flat. Netflix, takeaway, and a couple of glasses of wine, she decided, with Clyde for company, assuming he wasn’t upstairs with Primrose or planning on hitting the tiles. The thought that her landlady’s cat currently had a better social life than her brought a smile to Lila’s face, briefly lightening her mood.

When I am in a thoughtful mood, I often succeed in diverting the current of some mournful reflections by conjuring up a number of fanciful associations with the object that surround me, and dwelling upon the scenes and characters they suggest.

Each stimulus was displayed through headphones. After controlling for current mood, HA were worse at categorizing negative vocalizations. These results are important as they suggest that deficits in alexithymia generalize across sensory modalities.

I find the fact of the past, the reality of time's passage, incredibly difficult. My house is full of books I can't read and records to which I can't listen and photos at which I can't look because they are too strongly associated with the past. When I see friends from college, I try not to talk about college too much because I was so happy then--not necessarily happier than I am now, but with a happiness that was particular and specific in its moods and that will never come again. Those days of young splendour eat at me. I hit walls of past pleasure all the time, and for me past pleasure is much harder to process than past pain. To think of a terrible time that has gone: well, I know that post-traumatic stress is an acute affliction, but for me the traumas of the past are mercifully far away. The pleasures of the past, however, are tough. The memory of the good times with people who are no longer alive, or who are no longer the people they were: that is where I find the worst current pain. Don't make me remember, I say to the detritus of past pleasures. Depression can as easily be the consequence of too much that was joyful as of too much that was horrible. There is such a thing as post-joy stress too. The worst of depression lies in a present moment that cannot escape the past it idealizes or deplores.

The ragged bohemian life holds no charm for you anymore. But would you have reached your current position if you had not lived that life when you were younger?” “Now that you put it that way,” Carl said, “I agree that we might try to make some provision, in the future, for young bohemians—” “It wouldn't work,” Finkle-McGraw said. “I've been thinking about this for years. I had the same idea: Set up a sort of young artistic bohemian theme park, sprinkled around in all the major cities, where young New Atlantans who were so inclined could congregate and be subversive when they were in the mood. The whole idea was self-contradictory. Mr. Hollywood, I have devoted much effort, during the last decade or so, to the systematic encouragement of subversiveness.

...it was only natural that this mutual connection between sea and observer be forged: they were kindred spirits. The same, however, could not be done with the implacable moon: that imperious stalwart, which agitated the currents and spurned its beholder. This aloof satellite was formidable, yet neurotic, and so in spite of its ferocity, its movements were simple to predict, thereby granting this fearsome creature a veil of placidity. Its magnitude of torque was easily outmatched by that forceful heave of fear portending any misalignment with its anticipated schedule of phases. It cycled through these on time and without hesitation, experiencing, all the while, a wide array of emotions in response to the dissatisfied countenance of the Master it served. And yet, these changes in mood remained prosaic and careful, dutiful to its Patron; thusly, betraying nothing of its own resentments or intentionality either to its dismissed observer or to its demanding Patron, divulging nothing even of the influence which it potentially wielded over the Patron Planet, but which, in its lunar insecurity, never reached full expression save for the idle touslings of liquid fur. Perhaps it was diffident or bashful—otherwise, it was simple and had little prevailing ambition. Its motives were immaterial, in fact, for its aspirations were easily eclipsed and often countermanded and so one could not help but anticipate in its withered mien a certain resignation, a retreat to introspection away from the gazes of those who mistook its surrender to deterministic forces as a duty held most solemn. To be sure, it was a specter oft-romanticized by dullard poets and priests who admired it for its calming reserve, its gentle wisdom in juxtaposition with the histrionic impatience of the sea: like a tired guardian and a screaming toddler with primacy afforded counterintuitively to the guardian. What mattered more, in fact, was the subject of its influence: the willful and disobedient medium which spurned that hands that molded it. The moldings were more like jostles really and for a time they felt just and reasonable, but soon they came to confine and until verily there was no movement available that was not otherwise preordained by the will of the master. The accursed moon!

He had come to believe in the fullness and flowering of his love for her, that he knew Violet’s every mood, every thought; but now he seemed to be losing her, and this sense that she was drifting away, borne on a current he could not feel, made him angry because it made him afraid.

Buildings are the unavoidable art, whether the high art of the architectural masterpiece or the rich vernacular heritage of villages, towns and cities. Their forms and details are absorbed mostly on the nonconscious level, yet they weave their spell on the mind without our consent. They influence mood and demeanour, especially when they tap in to the subterranean currents of archetypal symbolism. On this level they can transmit subliminal messages of reassurance. // At the level of aesthetics per se , can we justify the belief that there is a social value which extends beyond merely offering transient pleasure?

Buildings are the unavoidable art, whether the high art of the architectural masterpiece or the rich vernacular heritage of villages, towns and cities. Their forms and details are absorbed mostly on the nonconscious level, yet they weave their spell on the mind without our consent. They influence mood and demeanour, especially when they tap in to the subterranean currents of archetypal symbolism. On this level they can transmit subliminal messages of reassurance.

VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DISRESPECT FOR THE PRINCIPAL For the official report: Keefe took it upon himself to slip Sea See into my tea and turn my eyes teal. 10 out of 10 A month of detention assigned. Thankfully, Kesler Dizznee was able to give me an antidote before orientation, so no one saw my altered appearance. Keefe claims he turned my eyes “Vacker Teal” to help me celebrate Alden’s remarkable recovery—and while I am exceedingly grateful that Sophie Foster was able to heal him, such a tribute would be seen as highly inappropriate, given my history with Alden. I also can’t allow Keefe to think it’s okay to slip elixirs into my food/beverages. —Dame Alina VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DISRUPTING DETENTION AND DISRESPECT FOR ACADEMY PROPERTY According to a report from Lady Cadence, both Keefe and Sophie Foster were caught placing effluxers wherever they wanted, rather than following her explicit instructions. 8 out of 10 One additional week of detention assigned. I’m sure Keefe was placing his effluxers in places where other prodigies would set them off (or maybe I was his target—I wouldn’t be surprised). So I’m glad Lady Cadence stopped this. But I can’t say I’m thrilled that she convinced the Council to add effluxers to the campus in the first place. I find it hard to believe we need protection from ogres! —Dame Alina VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S COMMENTS DISRUPTING DETENTION AND DISRESPECTING A MENTOR According to a report from Lady Cadence, Keefe and Sophie Foster were acting completely inappropriately during detention, and their behavior led to her getting sprayed in the face with musk-tang. 8 out of 10 Full Disciplinary Report given. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this “Full Disciplinary Report” Lady Cadence gave me. I think she’s hoping I’ll start expulsion proceedings. But Sophie is far too vital to the Council, given her ability to heal minds—and I’m not in the mood to deal with Lord and Lady Sencen. So I’m just going to leave them to their current punishment. —Dame Alina Update: I can’t believe I’m writing these words, but… I’ve been elected to the Council! I NO LONGER HAVE TO DEAL WITH UNRULY PRODIGIES. The new principal will be Magnate Leto (the former Beacon of the Silver Tower). —Councillor Alina VIOLATION SERIOUSNESS SENTENCE PRINCIPAL’S

down all the current stressors in your life and one step you could take to alleviate each one. Accepting that a difficult situation is real and clearly identifying the root problem is an important step. Proper diagnosis is half the cure. • Simplify your life. Eliminate and concentrate. Focus on the vital few things that contribute the most to your overall life satisfaction. Taking on too much or spreading yourself too thin inevitably leads to a sense of overload. 4. Combine aerobic, strength, and flexibility exercises. If you want maximum levels of energy, take responsibility for becoming a mini-expert on exercise and fitness. Subscribe to the most credible health and exercise magazines, add informative fitness sites to your Web favorites, and build your own library with the latest books, DVDs, and other resources related to energy and wellness. Aerobic exercise The most important component of effective exercise is aerobic exercise. Aerobics, or cardiovascular endurance, refers to the sustained ability of the heart, lungs, and blood to perform optimally. Through consistent aerobic conditioning, your body improves the way it takes in, transports, and uses oxygen. This means your heart and lungs will be stronger and more efficient at performing their functions. Proper aerobic exercise causes your body to burn fat, while anaerobic exercise causes the body to burn glycogen and store fat. Many people unknowingly exercise anaerobically when they intend to exercise aerobically. This results in, among other things, a frustrating retention of fat. The intensity of your exercise is what makes it anaerobic or aerobic. Consistent and proper aerobic exercise has the following benefits: • improves quality of sleep • relieves stress and anxiety • burns excess fat • suppresses appetite • enhances attitude and mood • stabilizes chemical balance • heightens self-esteem Each of the above benefits either directly or indirectly leads to high levels of both mental and physical energy. Here are some tips for maximizing the

Third, after getting your audience into the proper mood, you should explain why the topic of the speech is relevant to them—why they should want to listen to you. This might mean tying the speech to a recent headline in the news or a current event in the organization or unit. Or it might mean relating the topic to a problem of special interest to the audience—for example, increases in the crime rate to community groups.

In an interview with Business Wire in November 2011, Buffett said, “If you understand chapters 8 and 20 of The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham, 1949) and chapter 12 of The General Theory (John Maynard Keynes, 1936), you don’t need to read anything else and you can turn off your TV.”2 This advice from Buffett references two classics from the field of investing and economics. Chapter 8 of Graham’s book talks about not letting the mood swings of Mr. Market coax us into speculating, selling in panic, or trying to time the market. Chapter 20 explains that, after careful analysis of a company’s ongoing business and its prospects for future earnings, we should consider buying only if its current price implies a large margin of safety. In chapter 12 of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (“The State of Long-Term Expectation”), Keynes remarks that most professional investors and speculators were “largely concerned, not with making superior long-term forecasts of the probable yield of an investment over

Larkyra wasn't in the mood for a fight, but she also didn't want to merely walk away. Not now. Yet currently, with only one proper working hand... Ours, crooned her magic. Let us do it for you. Larkyra internally stroked her powers, which paced restless in her lungs, a master calming a hungry tiger. Gentle, she coaxed.

At the beach, life is different. Time doesn’t move hour to hour, but mood to moment. We live by the currents, plan by the tides, and follow the sun. Anon/Unknown

Biology: how the physical body functions         • Psychology: developmental issues and thought patterns         • Social connections: social support and current life situation         • Spiritual health: what life means