Blue Monday

It wasn´t eight yet. Walking through the city I wondered what I liked more, this pale blue light before sunrise making the world look like a dream, or the spectacle of the sky turning from pink to red to yellow and the firy red sun appearing slowly but still faster than you think it could move from behind the blue sea.

I was there just before it happened and enjoyed every second of it as if I hadn´t seen it uncountable times before. But I liked the view better when it turned back to normal - if you can call it that - , clouds veiled the sun, the sea turned from red to blue again and on the right side, where the sun had appeared, the shades of blue were fragile, close to white still and on the left side it was already turning into a blue proper.

A dog tried to take a huge stone in his mouth but it was too big, he was licking it as if to make it smaller and when all attempts failed he dug a big hole and threw it in there. I picked up some stones that caught my eye, one of them was shaped like a small blue arrow.

On my way back I drank coffee in the sun and read a little. Paper words first, Patrick Leigh Fermor´s "A time to keep silence", continuing where I had stopped yesterday, the bookmark I had used was a sugar bag from the place where I had started reading it. Today I was at another café though, closer to home, it was called Azul which means blue in Spanish.

Checking my Facebook newsfeed I saw a post about Blue Monday, claimed to be the most depressing day of the year. The date is generally reported as falling on the third Monday in January, which is today.
One of the formulas being used to calculate it is this one:

(C x R x ZZ)
------------------ + (P x Pr) > 400
((Tt + D) x St)

where Tt = travel time; D = delays; C = time spent on cultural activities; R = time spent relaxing; ZZ = time spent sleeping; St = time spent in a state of stress; P = time spent packing; Pr = time spent in preparation

Or:

[W + (D-d)] x T^Q
---------------------
M x N_a

W = time since Christmas, Q=time since failing our new year’s resolutions, M=low motivational levels, and Na=the feeling of a need to take action.

Needless to say this is all considered pseudoscience and the equasions “fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms” (Ben Goldacre, Guardian).

But I was having a blue Monday anyway. A delightful one.