This Year’s Summer

It’s been pretty awful weather since I got back from Golden Bay, as in it’s currently 54 degrees (Fahrenheit, that’s 12 for everyone else) outside, in the middle of what’s supposed to be summer, and it’s raining sideways and the wind is whipping the tree branches against my window in such a manner that suggests I am going to be having shipwreck dreams again tonight. I’ve spent some significant time the last couple days daydreaming about living in Takaka and working at the vegan bakery and learning how to make pottery and going to the beach every day, even though I know from life experience that when you actually live right by the beach you kind of just go whenever, not every day like everyone always says they would. But that hasn’t stopped me from sighing wistfully and thinking about the sun and the waves and the hills rolling down to the sea as I resentfully dig up my winter merinos and pull on my big wide scarf. I just don’t understand why I’m not on a beach, in a sundress, right now.

Weather growls aside (WHY CAN’T I WEAR MY SUNDRESSES) I have felt pretty…thoughtful, lately. I’ve just been doing my normal stuff since I got back, of course: going to work and going to the store and going for hot chocolate, seeing friends, reading books. My social calendar is filling up, as it does, now that everyone else is back in town too. Dance starts again on Sunday, yoga started up again this week and I went twice, and even I went to horrid old Body Pump class yesterday and had a massage tonight (“Yeah, your shoulders are almost in alignment now!”). I’m home under a blanket wearing my ridiculous pink hoodie, as I so often am on a Friday night these days, on my second cup of tea for the evening, thinking sadly about Haiti, wondering if it would be too ridiculous to have a fire or if I should just give up and get under the covers with the first season of Flight Of The Conchords instead.

But yes: thoughtful. Thinky. All I want to do since I’ve got back from my holidays is have conversations about how the past affects the future, or to read my horoscope, or to write down list after list of ways I want my life to change, only to crumple them up in a fit of believing I should just let go and accept and dissolve my expectations. I want to count my blessings. I want to come up with theories, except I want my theories to actually mean something, like I want to gather up all the available evidence and run the numbers and chart the graphs and then I want to intuit the answer, a shining golden irrefutable star, and then I want to wear the star around my neck, easily, unconcernedly, there when I need to reassure myself by touching it between my collarbones.

(Evidence about what? Numbers and charts and graphs measuring what?? I mean what are our operationalised definitions, here, huh? HUH? )

What to do next, I guess. What to expect, what to look for. Maybe what to avoid.

In the meantime I snuggle down under the blankets, listening to the wind and the rain of this year’s summer.