black mood

A few years earlier, in “Plant Dreaming Deep” — among the most successful of her 50-something works of poetry, fiction and memoir — Sarton offered a prescriptive one-liner for the bad days, learned from her mother: “What better way to get over a black mood than an hour of furious weeding.”

Papá’s black mood spilled over into our social life.

“Only sometimes when I’m in dissent do I get in a really black mood,” Breyer explained.

Arriving at the venue, a four-star Mayfair hotel that morning, I had found Cassell, 31, in a black mood: a client had just dropped out.

She interpreted each moment of lethargy or disappointment as the start of a black mood that would never end.