September: Pushing the boundaries
September is a true edge place of the year.
September cannot make up its mind if it is summer or autumn.
September is that twilight zone where you try to adjust to not being on vacation and getting back into the routine of work and/or study.
September is the month - in this part of the world - when you first notice the mornings are darker and the afternoon is slipping into evening more swiftly than you’d expected.
September is sometimes warm and golden, sometimes grey and stormy. September sun can make you sweat, and the rain can soak you to the skin.
September is a month of abundance - of late grain and veg and grape harvests. But the harvest leaves behind shorn fields and bare vines; a reminder of the coming scarcity of winter.
I wrote in my last note that I was recovering from covid (and a busy summer where I did practically no exercise except walking). This week, I have been easing back into my active life, although ‘ease’ is not the word, really. An ashtanga class that I completed with ‘ease’ six months ago has become a challenge. I have spent the past few days feeling as if I’ve pulled every muscle in my legs and core. But I’m working from the ground up… and I have discovered that I like pushing boundaries.
Lately, I have begun to look for knots of ‘unease’ so that I can disentangle them.
I always worried that my relationship with my eldest daughter (where we are more like best friends than mother and daughter) was in some way damaging, so I talked to her about it.
I always believed that my hamstrings were too tight to do the splits properly, so I am doing a daily splits masterclass.
I always imagined I’d feel uncomfortable writing about violence, sex and death, so I am writing a novel which centres on violence, sex and death.
I always thought there were certain things about myself which I needed to change, but I have begun to realise that I don’t need to change them, only to accept they are part of me.
It is in small ways that we become more than we were yesterday.
Liminally yours,
K