Feeling blue today, but that's all right

Trouble in mind, not because I'm blue, but because I'm troubled by the expectation this Beijing blue we've been enjoying will soon disappear. This unwelcome anticipation that the sun ain't gonna be shining through my windows sometime soon means I've something of a worried mind that I'm trying to put aside.

If you stay any length of time in the city, you soon come to appreciate this characteristic of the color: its power to lift the spirits. The Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky once said that blue draws us to the infinite, and certainly a blue sky draws the eyes in Beijing. It's a restorative release for the soul after you've not seen the sky since you don't know when because everything is buried in the color-destroying gray of smog.

When the place is like that, there's so much gloom and misery everywhere, it can be hard to even get yourself together.