a mind of winter

I'm sure you've heard the story, often attributed to Tolstoy, but most likely apocryphal, of a children's game in which your heart's dearest wish will be granted if ony you can stand in the corner for five minutes and not think about a white bear.

If you were wondering how I was feeling today, well, now you know.

edited to add: The title of the post comes from Wallace Stevens' poem, The Snow Man. Read it and, y'know, weep.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.