There’s a hum in the air. It’s quite hard to sit still. Anyone know what I’m talking about?
Now Winter is wimpering, Spring sings its songs. They sound soft, gentle, a throat still warming up not yet ready for its full vocal throes until the chilly days have fully lost their final breath. After a winter of respecting frozen ground with nothing going in and nothing coming out, when Spring happens it’s not just seeds in the ground that start this wake-up hum. It’s us too, I think. It’s making regular things almost impossible, for me at least, and I hope you recognise the feeling.
The thing is, convenient as it would be to want no more than to sit patiently at a desk going through everything on that list, life has other ideas. Life does not revolve around a table top, however beautiful a space it is. However perfectly a space is arranged, neatly organised and elegantly coordinated, paperweight and pot plant perfectly positioned, this is only a glimmer of the real picture. However brilliant the playlist, good the coffee, ergonomic the chair...
Life—and what I can bring to that desk—is about all the things that happen when we respond to the wake-up hum and get out and behave in our creaturely ways, running about in big open spaces, facing each other, braving true conversations, putting our hands and feet to the work of walking it all together.
This Easter weekend I took M off to an old favourite place – St. Dogmaels in Cardigan, where I used to spend summers with one of my oldest friends and her family. No telly, crap phone signal, a wood burner and some booze. Gigantic skies and massive reflections in tide-soaked sands, and as I was losing count of the rainbows we clung to each other so as not to be blown away off tiny and wild little Mwnt, and talked about the things that both bring us here and beckon us on. It was a step aside and away and the view back on home life became clearer, more hopeful. We probably managed to chat in a way we don’t very often.
Sometimes sitting inside at our desks diligently, to patiently work through lists and ideas, is the most important thing and what amazing tools we have to help us do this.
But sometimes, when the sun comes after winter, maybe the only ‘right’ is to be outside, photosynthesising, facing the rays and warming up—come on freckles you remember what to do here!—and listen out for that soft hum of things waking up, and ever so gently, strike up with your own note and join in. Tune in to your songs again, find out where your harmony fits. Practice that, and then take it back inside again a better singer.
If you don’t feel much like sitting at your desk today, I reckon that’s okay.
{Today’s Soundtrack: PJ Harvey – We Float}