The first day back repeated the weather of the evening before. Beautiful, springlike, all that. My bod, still functioning on European time, came to at 3 a.m. (three short hours after it had conked out) and stayed that way, me so unmistakeably awake that I surrendered, crawled out of bed, began trying to impose order on stuff pulled from baggage the evening before and left scattered around. Stayed awake, drifting around the house, simulating productivity. And despite two nights' severe lack of sleep, I carried on brilliantly, like a high-functioning genius. Or at least that's how I felt. Picked up the mountain of mail that had accumulated at the local post office, drove into town, went to the gym, did a big grocery shop, stuff like that. Feeling like the man of steel, carrying on as if I leaped five or six time zones all the time. Good thing, probably -- kept me from thinking too much about how I felt re: being back. If I'd thought about it much, I might have booked another flight east, packed up, bolted. Despite the outrageously user-friendly weather.
The second day back, Saturday, more normal April weather moved in, commencing four straight days of gray and damp, temperatures cool enough to warrant cranking up the coal stove. I continued with the man of steel thing, my system acting like it was invulnerable, unaffected by skipping merrily around the globe. That ended on Sunday. Something about the rain, the lack of sunlight. My energy seemed to bleed away, my bod gave in and crashed. I didn't fight it.
During the month away, my hair -- an irrepressible part of my anatomy, given to regenerating at nearly supersonic velocity -- seemed to grow at an even more accelerated rate. By the time I got back, my neck had begun having trouble supporting the additional mass accumulating up top. On Monday, post-crash, I made a trip to my haircutter -- a hugely entertaining woman, ex-proprietor of the now-defunct Acme Hair -- who gave me a bona fide shearing. I hardly noticed, the conversation got so interesting. As in the revealing of details from earlier, wilder times in her life. The particulars are not mine to pass on, except for this: somewhere back there along the timeline, she learned that when stopped by the state police, the younger officers didn't take it too well when confronted with an excessively happy female attempting to try on their headgear. Older officers, on the other hand, mostly seemed to enjoy the show.
That was nine days ago. I've been back now nearly two weeks. I write this on a Wednesday, the evening outside easing quietly toward dusk. Gray skies above, ever-greener land below. The tops of the hills that ring this part of the valley stand swathed in mist, low-hanging clouds, rain falls now and then. The kind of weather that produces beautiful warm-weather countryside. And the kind of weather that gets me spending more time than I wouldd prefer in my head.
A shot of sunlight would remedy that. The local teases in the weather biz claim we'll get some tomorrow. We'll see. In the meantime, the day outside, already dark and close, turns toward genuine starless darkness. Here in my hilltop fiefdom, I turn on lights and carry on as if I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I think I actually might have some idea what I'm doing, sometimes I feel clear, content, capable, busily creating a hellaciously interesting life. And other times? Well, not so much. Which is all right. (Grumble, grumble, gnashing of teeth.) I'm allowed to be less then perfect, a work in progress. Good thing, ‘cause there's nothing I can do about the not-flawless/in-progress thing.
Oh, blah blah blah.
Time to quiet down for a while.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brampton Park, Newcastle-under-Lyme, England
España, te echo de menos.
rws 7:46 PM [+]
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