Close your eyes and think back for a while, to some dark day when you just couldn’t smile.  Your face hung down and your eyes drooped low, and you waited and wallowed for a new breeze to blow.  You tried happy thoughts, a bath and junk food, but nothing you did could shake off that bad mood.  It got under your skin, soaked you inside and out, and smacked you around like a lost boxing bout.

But at some point that day, or maybe the next, you shook off that bad mood and wrote a new text.  You turned on a dime, or you opened your eyes, and the dark mood had left, you felt your heart rise.  The bad stuff seemed small, like broken-down junk, and you got yourself back and shook off your funk.  You turned it around with some help or alone, and your mood floated up like a helium stone.

Well as you think of that time, know I’m not there just yet.  My black mood and I are still tete-a-tete.  For a whole day now, I’ve felt just the same.  I’ve got a bad-ass bad mood that’s too strong to tame.  Its causes are many and not worth repeating, but all day long now I’ve been taking a beating.  I put on a brave face to show to the world, so my mood is disguised and mostly unfurled.  But inside my chest and inside my head, the mood has moved in and made up a bed.  It has taken me over and sucked out my smile, kicked it into the corner and under a pile.

So I sit here this night and write my dark mood, without any hope of a new attitude.  I tried sugary treats and a wee shot of rum, but my sadness still lingers, no sunrise has come.  If I could talk to myself, I’d just get to griping, so I turned on my computer and just started typing.  The white screen soon filled with letters in black, and all I could hear was their clickity-clack.  I typed and I typed ‘til I needed a rest, but my heart was still sad, my countenance still stressed.  So I got out my chair and onto the floor, I did a lone push-up, and then twenty more.

When my push-ups were done, I felt slightly good, so I got to my knees and then up I stood.  I was next to my bookshelf, where many tomes sat – including Yertle the Turtle and Cat in the Hat.  Right next to them was Green Eggs and Ham with its famous main player, that Sam I Am.  That book stood beside a whole Suessy collection, ready for reading and closer inspection.  So I picked up the one about Mulberry Street and I sat on the couch and put up my feet.  I read that first book that Dr. Seuss made and right near the end, my mood started to fade.  I got up from the couch to grab something new – had in my hand If I Ran The Zoo.  I read that one fast, my mood quickly improving, bouncing along to his rhyming and grooving.

That Seuss has a magic, a rhythm, a style.  It makes you a child.  You can’t help but smile.  I kept reading until I had read every word, and by then something quite odd had occurred.  My deep, dark, black mood had started to crack.  The bright, happy me was on his way back.  And once it got rolling, that good mood had legs.  It leapt out of the muck, the dark and the dregs.  I forgot why exactly, things seemed so bad, and I could think much more clearly on the troubles I had.  One was just small, another quite lame.  A couple more problems were almost the same.  They were things I could solve, things I could change, stuff I could make better and start to arrange.

So I sat with my books and my newfound good mood, and thought for a bit on my new attitude.  Apparently Seuss is a powerful cure.  For me he works magic, of that I am sure.  In your home, on your shelves, upon closer inspection, you may not find your own Seussy collection.  You may not care for his words and his art.  Horton and Yertle are not close to your heart.   Hey, I understand.  That’s perfectly fine.  Your taste is yours, and my taste is mine.

So before I sign off, I’ll give you this tip which will shrink a bad stretch from a day to a blip.  If Seuss isn’t your style, and you want your spirits to climb, get out your keyboard or pen and try writing in rhyme.