I got soaked this morning. For some reason I wasn’t expecting it, though he had said it would rain. It came on quite early on, a slow, drenching sort of rain. Drawing was out of the question. It seeped through my waterproof trousers, making me feel cold. And yet, there is something pleasing about stripping off when you get home and slowly thawing back to life. Sadly, I have to go out in it again and my waterproofs are still sodden. Heigh ho.
The rain hasn’t come yet, but my hips tell me that it is. Most days, I am ok. My body moves as I wish, well sort of, but on other days, like today, my whole skeleton grows rigid with pain. It, like my work, must be endured until I can slough off this mortality. Some days, most days, I pray for it to be sooner rather than later.
I tell him I am feeling low and that I feel bad about not bringing more joy to my work. He tells me that it is because I am jaded. That I have no energy, and that the relentlessness of the work takes any freshness away. He is right. But there is no help for it. I must plough on.
I wish we didn’t but we do. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes we both give into the temptation and rage. Yesterday it was about money, and his desire to consume. He rails against curbs. In the end we reason it through, we always do, which is perhaps why this marriage of ours has survived. We are similar in some things but wildly different in others. And I cherish this. As I do him.
I know that it isn’t real, but it overtakes me nevertheless. It’s just the not being able to see it being finished, contained and good enough. How can I do it in such a short period of time and when will I know that it is enough?
I am weary and I am not sure why. Is it heat, anxiety over the ever looming deadline, or just lethargy? It shames me, for it is promising to be another beautiful day and I have all I need. Forgive me. I will try to rise up and, if I can, soar above it….
I saw it when I woke, the almost-full blue moon, but when I walked it had gone, disappeared. Where did it go to? This is a full moon in a Spanish sky from long, long ago.
Is it ever to be found? There is so much destruction in this constant warring, so much loss of life, of safety or security. Have we learnt nothing? I think of an afterlife where war has no place. Is it possible?
I get glimmers of it, in the form of a sharp, clear other way of thinking. And then I think, it may not be so bad. I may not be so bad, after all.
It featured on the news several times, about how the government have brought in Alan Milburn to look into why over million young adults are not working, in education or training. It’s a sad fact. I mourn for them. I’ve seen the hopelessness, the inwardness and the utter lack of motivation when I used to teach. What can be done to help them?