It’s the feel of the ordinary things I’ll remember most about this summer. I’ll remember tonight. Claire was packing her bag and listening to a podcast about knitting that was really about abortion. I never catch her doing just one thing. The glow of the kitchen lights was odd on her hair – the lopsided ponytail, the stray baby-hairs curling out of control in the humidity. Earlier the chicken broke in and left precious globs of shit on the floor for us. I cleaned it but I thought I saw a little leftover.
I love it here but I’m ready to leave. Shouldn’t these feelings be mutually exclusive? I guess they happen together all the time.
I feel as much a backwater as this place, still and quiet and calm. My thoughts are nebulous, drawn in drift – as shapeless as the clouds that swell the sky shut. Early this morning a thunderstorm rolled in and our riolett shook and Claire’s sleep-breathing didn’t even stutter. During the day French words move through my head without spines of grammar to hold sentences. I make myself nauseous eating too much Speculo. Lucifer the horse carries children in endless circles around the pasture. I lead him by the bridle and afterwards we lope around. Horses make me homesick. I don’t know where home is. Or what. These are the pieces that resemble the whole but don’t complete it.
Entire days pass glazed in some sleepy yellow, the air clover-sweet. That summer feeling suffuses everything. My emotional spectrum has shrunk to degrees of a single word – content. High. Medium. Low. Maybe I’m just tired. My brain is in static. A radio between stations. I listen to it like a song. Mindfulness in mindlessness. That’s the whole point of summer, these months of scheduled nothing – to empty out your head and then open your ears. To be attentive and uncomprehending. Abandon analysis. Feed logic to the chickens along with last night’s dinner scraps and see what comes out on the kitchen floor.
Two weeks at each place – how could that feel so long and so short? I’ve spent my whole life here. It’s only been an hour. Time makes no sense at all. Claire says when days start feeling short it’s time to get going. Maybe. She wants more time and I don’t know what I want. I never want Speculo again. Or maybe tomorrow. I want a little peace and quiet but not too much. Maybe every twenty year old has Goldielock’s syndrome. Tomorrow morning we have a train to catch. Claire’s suitcases will be lighter because she leaves the books she finishes at bus stops, and mine will be the same because I can’t.