THANK GOODNESS FOR TIME, OR EVERYTHING WOULD HAPPEN AT ONCE

My teacher friend and occasional life coach taught me the strategy of goal setting to do 15%. There is no stopping you from doing more, but the idea is to overcome analysis paralysis and set a smaller achievable goal instead of the long list that a lot of us work from daily.

The proportion of life to writing feels similar, so, in both cases, it seems like it’s never enough. If I could work 1 day and write the rest, or have 1 social event and then the next 6 days off, my life balance would be perfect! As it stands, running 1 day in 7 leads to unnecessary stiffness and muscle pain, and should clearly be more regularly. But most of us can’t get away with those proportion, and have to deal with the inverse reality, with a lot less time to process and ponder and reminisce and write about the things that are meaningful to us in a day. 

So as I go to bed late, I feel led to frenetically list the things that I have heard and thought about and enjoyed and do not (but most certainly will) forget. I have only met one person that I am certain had an eidetic  memory, and I am still jealous. If I remembered it all, I don’t think I would feel so compelled to write it down. I feel like Alexander Hamilton, but do it less. He wrote a lot, but I suspect that even he didn’t feel like he could write it all down. I hear the songs in my head on and off all day, and things like “I imagine death so much it feels like a memory” resonate with me. 

The title is a paraphrase from Einstein. This much I understand about relativity!

I listen to a podcast funnelled to a Pushkin channel I adore called Cautionary Tales. The episode was about a volcano called Mount Tambour in Indonesia with such terrible losses that it sounds like the Apocalypse. The weather in Europe is terrible and the season in Switzerland where a group of storytellers get together and change gothic literature forever is called the “year with summer”. Without it, the idea of Frankenstein’s monster and Vampires would never have happened. In Canada in 1816, a similar effect was felt. Reading about the eruption led to Pompeii, and another volcano eruption that was more well known, but still pretty obscure, from  1883.  Yes, I just discovered that George’s lies about raising money for the brave Krakatoans was based on a real disaster, just not at all in context.

I learned that the Louisiana Purchase from the Spanish (ignoring the nations that already lived there) actually included portions in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan!

I feel grateful, in a pool full of young swimmers, that my daughter is such a good one. She can’t remember how to breath without using snorkel goggles all fogged up and hasn’t swum like a human for years, but she is a graceful fish, who spend the afternoon trying to perfect her splash, while and watched and barely recalled the years of worry when she couldn’t be trusted even with a bubble on her back to pitch headfirst and try to drown. 

I wondered at words recorded in the genealogy searches of celebs how a person actually died of “asthenia”, a word that google struggled to believe exists.

I watched a new series of the British Bake-Off and heard the German baked called a “Konditormeister” in praise of winning the honour of the week.

I read about the British “Home Children” experiences and recognized familiar abuse and unreasonable expectations of a group that had no one defending them. 

I read about the architecture of a house, now a real estate agency in Burlington that looked, with the rolling lawn in front, like the back of the White House, with its neoGrecian columns and familiar lamp.

I even refound a website called Alloprof with how to write an argumentative essay, in French,  and many others, with explanations of what is required. 

Meanwhile, our friends travel around the Gaspésie without ever really knowing where we went, but finding their own adventure. 

Even in Covid times, we don’t have enough time for ourselves, or others. The only way I had time to write these few words was to go to sleep way past my bedtime.

PRIVACY AND POSSESSION

It was a busy weekend, filled with pleasures. A trip to Ottawa with my favourite daughter, to visit a favourite friend and her family, and absorb the wonder of a live performance of Hamilton. A trip to the border, with empty trunk and nervous battery saving for the return required arriveapp with a friend who is good company and needed a ride for her first visit to see her dad and stepmom since the pandemic descended. A walk and supper by the Lake Champlain, with a view of a Juniper Island crowded with evergreens and a layered backdrop of the Adirondack mountains with a warm summer breeze.

 I went to be tired, with windows open and fan blowing to bring in the fresh cooler air that the rainstorm had afforded. I woke up in a  shirt and underwear, and no alarm. When I went to the kitchen to get breakfast, and looked out the living room window while petting Calico, I realized that I felt freer than usual. My neighbour to the direction of both of those rooms’ window, and to the back are not home. One is  recovering from illness in the hospital, and unlikely to return given the state of dementia he was living with. The other is on holiday in Europe for a couple of weeks. 

Normally, I am not aware of an restrictions in my house. I feel fortunate (even uncomfortable in being spoiled) with the amount of space and freedom living in the suburbs in a luxurious detached house with some generous yard space surrounding it. But today I see that I feel boxed on equally, and that I would prefer additional private space outside my walls to truly feel the freedom I ideally crave.

My friend in Ottawa had bought a brand new car to replace the old one that was without air conditioner and leaking coolant. She commutes a significant distance for work, and was enjoying the safety and convenience of her new reliable car until the Monday previous, when it was stolen from her drive way. Even worse, she had managed to acquire the car in her preferred red, which was hard to come by in this market, and even harder to replace at this moment. Additionally, she had spend an hour on the phone answering innumerable questions about insurance, only to find out that the replacement cost had not been discussed, and she was not covered as she had reasonable expected for a new car.

What we have, and how we feel we own it, is both a pleasure and a burden. The necessity of something is most easily debated when we do without, or are gifted something unexpectedly. Communal ownership or a detachment from our possessions is critical to our satisfaction. Living simply with few needs, but with enough to answer then, is a tightrope to be walked with care. It is a scale to be balanced. It is a constant tasting, like the three bears, to find the temperate that is “just right”, knowing that it will not last long, and we will have to keep on testing. 

Things fall apart, break down, go away. People and relationships do too. The Newtonian rules of the universe taught me this in high school, but the reality of Einstein’s relativity would come later. The energy is never lost, and it can be used to rebuild, repair, renew in a different form. Life and ownership, friendships, needs and wants, are constantly changing. Our happiness can not depend on any particular form of it, but it is a nice thing to enjoy what we really love while we have it, as long as we are not dependent on it and dissatisfied when we lose it.