Rafikis,
I have been reminded in the sweetest possible way that the last time I wrote on a Friday Afternoon was over two years ago. I can only explain it by saying that perhaps it is because since then there haven't actually been any Friday Afternoons. If one were being metaphorical for example, if time or place were in fact one and the same as state of mind.
Or perhaps it is in the constellations. My horoscope for the day reads: "sometimes a slug seems to be your spirit animal, as you inch along with tasks and to do lists". I am bristling. I feel like writing back to my stars and defending myself. Yes, I have a to do list, yes, it may be parcelled out in five different places, and yes, I am inching along. It's not because I'm slow though, it's because I am easily distracted.
Take my Friday afternoon, for example. I had a report to write. Just a small piece of internet research to do first. And that's where it all went belly up. It was a ride though: I started out with a very relevant google search and then, freedom! I travelled all over the place - relevant, irrelevant, savoury, not quite savoury, but certainly unboundless, unlimited. Only my constellation knows how I chanced upon this, from Virginia Woolf's "Shakespeare's Sister", but if state of mind can be the same as time or place, then this is where I found myself:
"....sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. To the right and left, bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour - even it seemed burnt with the heat - of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders.
There one might have sat the clock round, lost in thought. Thought - to call it by a prouder name than it deserved - had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until - you know the little tug - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?........But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind - put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still."
What a luscious place that was, and what's more it extended into the rest of the weekend. Report and to-do lists left gloriously untouched as I tried to chase that little fish and as I thought of rafikis and Friday Afternoons.
So how are you? For many, it's been such a long time but it really doesn't feel like two years. I am completely startled. But I think this Sunday evening I have finally come to accept the inching along thing. I've made peace with my spirit slug.
And better still, I'd very much like to hear from you.
5 August, 2007
