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I've noticed a trend.
As the days get longer and the weather starts to turn, and the cherry blossom tree in the garden blooms, and the pigeon couple (who mate for life?) show up again and do their annual ritual on the garden wall, and the grass grows incessantly, and the usual familiar fragrances of the approaching summer hang in the air, I make a realisation. I am SAD.
Not in the "boo-hoo" sort of way, you understand. See, in the dark, biting cold winter months I feel warm, cozy, happy and content. Even in my darkest days I'm further up the mood spectrum than at any other point in the year. As springtime nears, however, I'm aware of a growing unease, a sense of unwelcome changes coming, and by Summer I am full-on miserable.
Ah, Summertime. The nights that never get dark; the uncomfortable heat; the aroma of neighbourhood barbeques in full swing. I really can't stand it. Sweaty balls and sleepless nights. That's what Summer means to me.
I've heard of people getting down in winter, the so-called Winter Blues. It's now got a medically recognised term - Seasonal Affective Disorder, though I've not come across anyone who's ever had it in any other season than winter, and people think I'm weird - an outlier, an abboration. The fly in the ointment. The monkey in the wrench. The proverbial pain-in-the-ass.
Maybe I am. Weird, I mean. I do love the rain, and snowstorms, and foggy days; I love splitting thunder, and hail, and driving wind. I mean, come on. There really is nothing better than sitting by the window on a miserable, stormy day or night and reading, or writing. Complete immersion.
If I were any other mammal, I think I'd be a ground-dweller. A rabbit, or a fox or a badger. Safe in my hole in the ground. Maybe that's why I love The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. Not the movies. The real, balls-to-the-wall source material. I'm like Bilbo. I don't care much for the sea.
I want mountains. "Mountains, Gandalf!".
I've spent a good deal of time hiking above the snow line. The best time is in the dead of winter, when the casual climbers are back in their urban abyss, and only the weird and the wild cross paths in the mountains and deep forests. You do that sort of thing in the height of the summer season and all you're doing is providing a meal for the ticks and the midges. Not in winter, though. They're all long dead, or in hibernation.
I sometimes wonder if my animal-spirit is not, if fact, mammalian at all. Maybe I would be a solitary spider, though I'd have to be a herbivorous one because I do not have a predatory nature.
On that note, my Spidey-sense is tingling and I have work to do. I bid you adieu!