The rest of your summers
Does anyone have a quiet couple of weeks anymore? I’m after coming out of a month of Being On and now have a few weeks of Being Tired as I move job. I’ve decided I’m going to embrace the seasons as a way of controlling time. That way I’m in cahoots with the gods. I bought a little ceramic pumpkin gourd in a local café the other morning. Dotey little yoke, in my opinion. Someone told me it looked like a mouldy apple. Technically, that’s also part of the season. I'm trying to think of a Halloween outfit I can get out of one of the two decent wigs to which I have access. I’m looking up recipes for vegetarian Thanksgiving sides. I’m planning to set an evening aside every week from mid October for a holiday romance movie. I’m gonna pack my ereader with similar stories of small towns and career shifts. Last year, a planned trip to Italy kept me going. This year schmaltz will feed my soul. I have ‘winter’ in the Calm app search bar ready to go.
I saw a post on social media this week where someone recalled the words of a relative facing death. I’ll have no more summers, the person said. The poster said it was an observation which changed their perspective and approach to work and life. I am thinking about purpose and what we choose to do with our lives a lot the past month. Some of it is my own small changes and the struggle to find time for writing in between other obligations, including rest and fun. Having time for fun is so important. Everyone needs a weightless brain slot where they are free of deadline and to-do list thoughts. Easier said than done when time and an inbox is always gnawing at your heels.
But some of my thinking on the topic of time and how we use ours has been darkened by watching fascist scum try to destroy our society. Imagine having one run at this world and choosing hate? Exploiting lost and lonely souls and dragging them into a race to the bottom? Wanting an atmosphere which chokes everyone but you?
It terrifies me. It makes me sad. And then I am angry.
The both sides argument always asks the weaker side to stop asking for better. It is a failure of imagination to not want this earth to belong to everyone. That’s one of the many things that annoys me about the bastards and their recruits, the lack of awe at how much cooler humanity can be.
P.S.
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Radio play heads, I’m enjoying this BBC adaptation of Sella Gibbons’ Westwood. Set during the London Blitz, about a nice schoolteacher gal being caught up in upper middle class nonsense. I’ve not read the novel.
I loved reading about Catherine Cleary’s crusade to build a forest. Strangely relaxing to read about all that physical labour.