And finally, here it is, what we've been waiting for. Nearly a week after Easter (and apparently this year Roman Easter and Greek Easter were the same day, which is in itself a fairly weird result of changing calendars and seasons).
A young father, slightly anxious-looking but in a light t-shirt, walks with a child on a plastic tricycle behind my house; the child falls and he stops, helps, wipes off a hand. In front of the house a car stops to pick up someone, radio blaring – oh well, not all the flashes of outdoor behavior are pleasant; I wonder if there is a generation coming, perhaps in fifty years, that isn't as fascinated with loud musics as are most people who grew up since the mid-60s. The radio is turned down after a few minutes, there is laughter, a car door slamming. I'm getting ready to go out, to meet Michael and Andrew in town, and meanwhile bringing the computer, to sit in a café and continue working.
There have been flashes of good weather, increasing during the week – Bennett and I went to the large garden store up in Northumberland the other day, and it seemed almost warm and sunny at the beginning of the trip, then chill and gray by its end. Then yesterday when I planted my bought herbs, it was pleasant in the morning, miserable in the evening.
But today the sun seems pretty solid, fairly well established in its presence... there is rain predicted later, but the look of things seems serenely springlike. Perhaps it's time to do just one more planter – there are now four planters of baby herbs, but I haven't done the seeds; although I clearly need more compost/dirt, and unfortunately my tiny strip of garden doesn't really have any extra soil I can use. (A shame that my otherwise very helpful/pleasant landlord decided to turn the whole thing into a deck eight years ago.)
And I did some work on the book on Gerhard yesterday; there will be more done today... this is really so easy, it's ridiculous that I didn't finish it a decade or more ago. And that would be a great burden shifted: it would mean that practically all research, all projects, that involved someone else's career would be gone – and I wouldn't take up any more: I am too flaky in my writing to have other people depend on me, and don't want it to happen again.
Possibilities seem generally easier, futures seem lighter and more casually bright. As noted in the Jungian literature, breaking through old problems, old complexes, isn't often about grand fights with horrible creatures, although one always anticipates and dreams that they will be. It is more often about things that used to seem impossible, or awful, or miserable, fading into relative unimportance over time and through change; they become either manageable or they simply stop mattering. Even better, it is about chunks of complexes that seemed knotted all in one great, terrible 'deathstar' of unhappiness or tension disintegrating into little pieces of things, each of which are easily handled. It is a bit like legends of dangerous beasts that come apart into smaller, more easily squashed creatures; and you wonder why you wasted years, decades, worrying about mere gnats, small pests that can be ignored or overcome without difficulty.
And sometimes the changes in seasons help, too....
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